“We’ve got to keep moving,” I said hoarsely.
“They know where to find us.”
“The Senator sold us. Why?”
“Damned if I know. Town’s too hot now,” said Jack.
“Took them long enough.”
“They’ve got us. They’ll cordon off the area and set up patrols. There’ll be a uniform at every callbox and a flying squad ready in a trice. We’ve got to get off the island.”
“How? They’ll call the stations and blockade the bridges. Even if we grab a motor—”
“We’ve got to get off,” repeated Jack.
“No, let’s go to ground,” I whimpered.
Jack rounded on me.
“Where? If they knew we’d be at that dump they’ll have the jump on us wherever we bolt. Use your head.”
His venom put my back up. I tamped down my rage for the moment. “Follow me,” I said.
“Where? Gaol?”
“No. Never that.”
We crept to the alley mouth and argued over our bearings. I told Jack my notion. He thought it over a minute and shrugged.
“Could be worse. Not by much.”
It was touch and go. The most dangerous moment was crossing the wide, well-lit expanse of McGill Street from Griffintown into old Ville Marie. We passed the Customs House and prowled along to the river. Jack stuck by me as I worried our way along, stopping at every noise. We wouldn’t last a night plus the light of day on the run in this city, no friends and the police after us. It would end in a bloody fusillade. By pussyfooting it we came to our goal and fortune smiled on failure. It was there.
“Luck of the bloody Irish,” Jack said.
MY OLD COMRADE managed a tight grin as we stepped out from our concealed position to the deserted promenade between Alexandra and King Edward quays. I looked down at the rowboat I’d seen tied up by a freighter on Friday when we’d killed the moneymen.
“What was the boat called?” I asked.
“The Hatteras Abyssal.”
“Gone now,” I said.
“Back to Holland,” said Jack.
For the nonce there were no other large freighters moored nearby. Either chance or design, it didn’t matter. We coasted to the rusty ladder and Jack climbed down. I spied a nightwatchman or harbour patrolman walking towards us.
“Hurry,” I breathed.
I shoved the Webley in my belt and followed Jack onto the skiff. I wobbled into the stern.
“You row,” Jack said.
I untied us and pushed away. We were in a dark canyon between piers. With the oars I pivoted us around and out of the slack through an eddy of detritus and buoyant trash. We moved into the river proper and I pulled to place us beyond pistol range. I could see the watchman’s head but he never broke stride. My gun barrel bit into my crotch so I passed the gun to Jack. He lay low at the bow with his wrists steady on the rim, ready to fire. In five minutes we were well past the end of the pier and soon entered the wide, strong current of the St. Lawrence. Jack turned and I rested at the oars, letting the flow push us downriver. We gazed back at the dirty maroon incandescence of Montreal.
Headlamps blazed along the wharves. I heard police sirens, far away. We’d slipped the net. Black silhouettes of church spires and the mountain framed the night against the burning luminous city, stars high beyond, Orion rising. The shore retreated, diminishing as we were swept along. A massive steamship at Jacques Cartier Quay boomed its whistle and was echoed by a train pulling along the shore. We had a way to go to make our escape and Christ knew what was on the other side, wherever we ended up. Our skiff passed into the fast current in line with the clock tower at Victoria Quay. It was now past midnight.
“Meet me under the clock,” I said.
A reckless hilarity welled up in me. I saw Jack grin at the Vancouver expression, the timepiece at Birks under which everyone met. I sang: “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
Past St. Helen’s Island and the looming foundations of the harbour bridge we struck land at the southern shore and ground up on the rocky shingle at Longueil. Jack jumped out and tugged the lead rope. I leapt after. We took heavy stones and staved in the rowboat, Cortés at Vera Cruz. Jack sat and took off his hat, then held his wristwatch to his ear.
“Stopped,” he said.
We climbed through the thin trees lining the riverbank to higher ground. I looked back at the city. Jack kept walking. I met him at a ditch angled away from the wind. We lay down in an empty field back to back for warmth, coats tightly buttoned. Orion hunted above us, our companion through the long watch.
HALLOWE’EN
THE GREY FIGURE stirred with the morning light. Frost had formed on the dying blades of grass and the ground was hard and cold.
“Dreamed I was ironing the carpet,” Jack said, rolling and levering himself upright. He swiped smut from the corners of his eyes, then dirt and leaves from coat and trousers. We were near a wire property fence and I sat with my back to a post studded with rusty nails. Earlier I’d taken breakfast: a shot of morphine.
“I dreamt I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
Jack laughed and stood to take account of himself, his billfold and lost cane, then pissed a steaming stream of urine in the growing sunshine. He buttoned, tucked in his shirt, smoothed his hair, replaced his hat, and jumped up and down to come alive, then checked the Browning and the Webley. Done, he walked to me and handed me my weapon.
“What now?” I asked.
“How much money do you have?”
“Six hundred or so,” I said.
“It’ll do. Want to tie up a few loose ends. Then we hit the road.”
“Oke.”
Jack put the pistol in his belt at the small of his back. He sorted through a sheaf of papers: stray banknotes, Brown’s gambling markers, lucky playing cards. I stood and shook like a dog before the day’s ramble. Jack vaulted the fence and I followed; our boots started crunching over field stubble. A bell for early mass slowly tolled in the bright, cold air. We walked towards its source.
At a crossroad east of the church stood a garish Crucifixion, the blood a startling red against the blue sky. Jesus was snow-white; his peeling paint lent the martyr a leprous cast. At the foot of the execution device someone had planted coloured cellophane flowers. We continued past Golgotha to Rome.
“Saint-Zotique,” Jack said, eyeing the clapboard. “Wonder who he is when he’s at home.”
Old women in black and bearded men congregated at the open doors. Atop a wagon hitched to a sad dray sat a dour moustached man and his enshawled wife with their seven silent children. Horses stood next to farming lorries and a collection of old Fords and Frontenacs. Abutting the church was a straggling orchard. Jack pulled tough little apples from tree boughs and we walked west, the sun warming our backs.
By degrees the sky lightened. Clouds thickened into pleasing discrete masses serene and indifferent to us in the sparkling blue. There was the play of sun warming the earth and from bare branch to rose trellis before a tidy square house flitted a pair of tardy, ragged robins. Jack bit into an apple and spat.
“Sour as hell.”
We walked along the verge as the day came to life, touching our hats to ladies and nodding at men.
Half an hour more and we reached Longueil proper, a quartier of low buildings. I was exhausted, dampened by the drug and a fatal indifference. Minor traffic moved afoot on the macadamized roads past a closed bank, shuttered barbershop, the Knights of Columbus, a general store open for business despite the Sabbath. Jack pointed and said: “The Bell.”
The sign read “The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Local and Long-Distance Calls.” We entered the store. To clean my teeth I bought a spruce beer off the lackadaisical shop proprietor and eavesdropped on Jack in the booth.