Chapter Twelve

The events of the day had upset me. I was in a state, in fact, to apply the train treatment.

When you’re sitting in your compartment, bouncing along a roadbed, rough as all roadbeds are, wondering how you will manage to get a good night’s sleep, follow my recipe. Take a bottle of good rye from your suitcase—no excuses now; if you travel without a good bottle you have no business travelling. Carefully measure four ounces into a paper cup of suitable size, add water to taste, drink it quickly, and lie down. If you aren’t asleep in fifteen minutes, repeat the dose. After that, the engineer can take the locomotive off the tracks and try to climb trees, and you won’t feel it.

I followed the prescription implicitly, except that I substituted glassware for the paper cups. I came into my bedroom with the initial dose in my right hand and the emergency portion in my left, undressed, sat on the bed, and took my medicine.

It had been a bad day.

From the time I tiptoed into Priscilla’s room and found her shot until I’d knocked the gun from Hanwood’s hand, all my ductless glands had been taxed to the capacity of their blind being. I was now emotionally sucked dry.

For a while things had looked good. Priscilla had come through surgery and MacArnold had stumbled on what might be the solution to both the cases I was working on. After that, though, things fell apart.

To prove MacArnold’s theory it had to be shown that Foster lived across the hall from the gamblers and had some sort of trick set-up for imaging the departing suckers. It had to be shown that blackmail was being committed. It had to be shown that Irish Joe was in cahoots with Crawfie. I could work on the second and third items in this string, but the first seemed to be a blind herring. Crawfie didn’t live in apartment fifteen, unless he was Hanwood’s boyfriend, which I doubted, and you can’t shoot pictures through solid oak. Unless there was some way around that one, MacArnold was dead wrong, and I still had two unsolved problems on my hands instead of one case figured out and just waiting for proof.

But no. It was all one case. Item one, the pictures I’d found were definitely connected with Crawfie Foster, and just as definitely they were shots of the doorway of the gambling apartment.

Item two, the little guy who was shot in front of the gamblers’ door was the little guy Crawfie had snapped.

But what was his connection with the case, why had he been killed, and who had shot him? Had he been just coming away from the crap game when he was shot? Had he been bumped by someone from inside the apartment, or had the killer been waiting for him in the hall?

Now, true, I had just one case. But it had three separate angles—the Chesterley murder, the disappearance of Crawfie Foster, and the sudden death of the little man—instead of the two earlier problems.

Verily, life was not easy.

Priscilla’s shooting was another thing entirely, closely enough linked with Crawfie’s hiding-out to be called part of the same problem. And it made me sick at my stomach to think of the poor kid lying there asleep, waking to the sight of a man with a gun and hear a bullet spit at her chest. A lot of things Crawfie had done made me sick, and if this was his baby, and I found him, Framboise would never see him alive.

I didn’t like to think about that. I didn’t like the senseless, seemingly purposeless slaying of the little man. I didn’t like anything about the case. To add to all that, I was slowly going crazy about Elena and knowing all the time, trying to beat it through my stupid skull, she wasn’t worth it. I didn’t like her attitude. I didn’t like Hanwood’s attitude, either, but I’d taken steps tonight to change that.

I raised the second potion to my lips and downed it. Tonight, if he wanted to, the engineer could unhitch his engine and then come back and start playing bull-in-the-pasture with my car, and I wouldn’t care.

I slept until about eight in the morning. I woke with a slight buzzing in my ears and a vague, detached feeling of being slightly doped, but I was rested and it was a beautiful day. I took off my pyjama coat and found the pants and put them on. I wandered barefoot through my well-rugged living room, threw open the French doors at the far end, and stepped onto my terrace. It was a beautiful day.

The sun was halfway up on its journey to the top of the misty, cloudless blue sky. Far away before me, haze softened the rolling tops of the blue hills across the border in the States. Nearer, the flat plain of the Laurentian lowlands was green. Self-important little boats pushed their way up the river toward the Lachine Canal. And still nearer, all beneath me, was the city I love.

Montreal is not the Paris of America, nor the New Orleans of the North, nor the Manhattan of Canada, though she has been called all those things. She is her own city, a city on an island climbing two mountains, a city cleaved down the middle by a line dividing English and French, a city with verve and yet much dignity, a good place to live and—sometimes, an easy place to die.

Which brought my mind right back to the previous night, and to my futile thoughts about the death of Chesterley, the attack on Priscilla, and the shooting of the little man.

I looked downhill toward the river, down through the mixture of old-walled dwellings with many green trees that is the picture of Montreal in spring or summer. I looked down at the old financial district—the massive height of the Royal Bank building, the smaller Aldred skyscraper, the twin towers of old Notre Dame Church. I decided the next thing to do was go down there.

My terrace was bounded at the left by a waist-high masonry wall separating it from the terrace of the next apartment. From next door, I heard just then the rattle of French doors being opened. I looked back, and through the glass I could see Mrs. MacEchran’s cobwebby old red wig threshing from side to side in effort as she clawed her way into the sunlight. Then the doors popped open and she was expelled onto her terrace like an old bone coughed out by a dog.

She was wearing a rust-colored wrapper that was older than her hair. A number of moths had died of over-indulgence after working on it. She had old cloth slippers that a ragpicker wouldn’t have fished out of a garbage can, and there was a line of dirt around her skinny old ankles just above them. She was so much like a pile of offal I was afraid of spontaneous combustion when the sunlight hit her.

She hadn’t intended to come right onto the terrace and retreated back to the edge of her French door. “Nudity!” she screamed at me. “Nakedness! This is supposed to be a respectable neighborhood. For shame! I’ll report you to the police.”

I hitched up my pyjama pants with one hand and waved to her with the other. “Beautiful morning,” I said cordially.

She retreated, nose high, and slammed the door with a clatter. Then she opened it again a crack. “And I’ve told the manager,” she shrilled. “I’ve told him how you tried to shoot me.”

Slam again, and this time she was gone.

Ah, yes, lovely morning.

I went inside and to the kitchen. I got out a bottle of beer, heated up a frying pan and poured about two tablespoons of the beer in it. I broke three eggs into the pan, scrambled them, seasoned them with salt and pepper and lots of tarragon, and scraped the makings of a wonderful breakfast out onto a plate.

And somebody banged at my front door.

To hell with them. I ate the eggs.

After I’d rinsed off the plate and finished a glass of milk, and got the coffee cooking, the banging was still going on. I went to the front door and called, “Who is it?”

“Lila!”

I rubbed the top of my head. I said, “I’ll count to ten, and if you aren’t gone I’ll come out there and break both your arms.”

“I want to explain.”

“You want your arms broke?”

“I’ll take the chance, if you let me talk first.”

“Wait a minute.”

I went to the hall closet and pulled out my shoulder holster with the automatic in it. I checked the automatic to make sure it was full of lead, and took off the safety. With the holster buckled over my bare chest I went back to the door and opened it on the safety chain. It was Lila, all right.

“Stand aside,” I told her. “I want to be sure the hall’s clear.” She got out of my line of sight and I convinced myself nobody big enough to be troublesome was in the corridor.

Then I let her in, closed the door, put the chain back on, then the snap-lock, and I turned the key on the night latch and took it out. I stuffed it in the band of my pyjamas.

Lila gazed at me. “Mmmm. Manly chest!” She reached out and ran a smooth fingertip down my ribs. Her fingernail tickled.

Feelings that are natural to any grown man at certain times began to tingle in my blood. After all, she was a beautiful girl. She looked remarkably like Elena—even if she did have a slightly different character. And after my frustrating evening, a girl who looked like Elena ran a certain risk coming here.

She’d attacked me. She couldn’t complain very much if I attacked …

Nuh-uh, I thought. Remember Samson, and what Delilah did to him?

“Leave the chest alone,” I said harshly. “It’s all right. But that’s more than I can say for my head, where you socked me.”

“Oh, that!” she said scornfully.

Her tone got me mad enough I didn’t have to worry about yielding to her charms. “Yes, that!” I yelled. “I don’t have a head made of rock, like your friend with the indigo jaw, Irish Joe, or whoever he is. When you break a bottle on my head it affects me.”

“You threw a chair at me first.”

“I was pretty careless. I missed you.”

“Look, honest. I didn’t know the lugs were going to beat you up. They gave me ten bucks to get them into your apartment. They said they just wanted to talk to you and warn you against something.”

“Warn me against what?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Okay, so they start to beat me up. Just as I’m mopping the floor with them, you slug me. Got any good reasons why I shouldn’t slug you back right now?”

“Lots, but we’ll get to those later. Look, I’m sorry. I was scared. All I could think of was, you’d finish them off, and then probably beat me up, and turn all three of us over to the cops.”

“Why are you scared of the cops?”

“I’m not, usually. But I doubt it would be a good idea to be picked up in company with those two.”

“So why were you working for them?”

“I told you. I didn’t know they were sluggers. I didn’t realize how bad they were until they started working you over.”

“Where did you meet them?”

“Where I work. I’m a nightclub photo girl. I ran into them often in the Crystal Ball.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I don’t work now. Last month I worked for Foster.”

“You know Priscilla Dover?”

“Sure I do. I didn’t come here to enquire about your health. I heard Priscilla had been shot—her landlady told me when I phoned there this morning. I called the hospital and they wouldn’t tell me anything much, except that you were listed as her next-of-kin or something. Imagine my surprise.”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly.

“So how is Priscilla?”

“I’ll find out. Because I want to know myself, not for you.”

I got Danny Moore on the phone. Priscilla had had a pretty poor night, because they didn’t dare strain her heart with too much pain-killer, but she was still improving. She wasn’t in condition to talk to anyone, but she’d be all right. I gave Lila the news.

“Poor kid. Who shot her?”

“One gets you ten it was Crawfie Foster, but I sure can’t prove it right now. I can’t even find him.”

“A lot of people would like to find him. He owes me a month’s wages, so I’d be very happy to see him.”

“If I find him, I’ll tell you.”

“Thanks. I’ll split with you on what I get out of him.”

“Forget it. I’m not interested in making dough on this one. I just want to wring Foster’s neck.”

“Because you think he shot Priscilla?”

“Yep, mainly.”

“You’re not too bad a guy, are you?” She grinned an impish grin. She reminded me a lot of Elena, the few times Elena wasn’t in a tragic mood. Lila was not as finely groomed as Elena, and the planes of her face were not classic, but she had more life than Elena. More sparkle. And the same figure.

I thought for a minute of the picture Lila had presented with her dress unbuttoned. I noticed she was wearing a zippered dress. I turned those thoughts over in my mind for a little while and decided it might be a good idea for me to go get into a cold shower right away.

Lila said, with a teasing grin, “There was another reason why I came around. I was afraid the demonstration the other night maybe wasn’t convincing.”

I swallowed hard. “Demonstration?”

“About the foam rubber,” she said. “Remember?” Her hand travelled slowly up to the neck of her dress. She unzipped.

It was a way too late for the shower.

“See?” she said proudly, and she could be proud.

This time there was no possibility of doubt. Because there was no brassiere.

A few minutes later she said, “Well, my golly! You might take off that old gun belt!”