Taking the Fight to the Enemy
Increased Police Powers Bring Results
Cecil Harmsworth
Staff Writer
The Beacon
The Bootlegging Crusade marches forward.
With hands untied by government red tape, officers are finally able do their job effectively and criminals need not be treated with kid gloves. Enforcement may now be unexpected, and while the interrogations may be tough, the sheer volume of guilty pleas speaks to their success.
“The holding cells are bursting,” observed Deputy Warden Chas Older, “and there will be hundreds more to come. If this continues, there will surely be a need for more facilities.”
Less enthusiastic is Joe Naylor of the so-called One Big Union: “It puts working men in gaol and is making British Columbia a province of snitches.”
However, whether for or against, this reporter could find no one who would deny the program’s effectiveness.
Thanks to tougher measures against profiteers of illegal alcohol, officers on the front lines have clipped the wings of bootleggers, who poison their customers and deprive the province of tax dollars that could ease the plight of veterans, victims of crime and the poor.
In outlying areas, travelling informants, acting as salesmen, loggers and teachers, have broken the code of silence that is all too common in small communities.
As arrests reveal the extent of the problem, there is evidence that public opinion has begun to turn against liquor criminals. In Yale, known bootleggers were visited by fellow citizens in masks and white robes who set fire to outbuildings containing vats and other illegal equipment. In Fernie, men in similar costume arrived at the home of a local bootlegger in the dead of night with torches and threatened him with hanging for the harm he had vested on their community.
A statement from Mrs Albert McDuff of the People’s Prohibition Association reads, “Thanks to the acting premier, British Columbians have made remarkable progress in the fight against alcohol abuse. If only Boris Stalker had been in power in 1917, our province would now be booze-free.”
Independent MLA Victor Newson agrees: “We find ourselves in this situation thanks to timid, hypocritical concessions to booze profiteers on the part of the previous Attorney General. Protesters against Stalker’s program, rather than interfering with traffic, might better lay their complaints at Gordon Cunning’s grave.”
He awakens in a bed not his own. He smells something sweetish—chloroform?
So that’s what it was. And she was so pretty.
Lazily he opens his eyes. The ceiling and walls have been painted institutional white. (With the help of a few hundred cigarettes, they will gain the same pus-like patina as the holding cells at the station on Cordova Street.)
What new hell is this?
He turns his head gently this way and that. Oddly the room is not square nor oblong but triangular. To his upper left, a square window is situated too high to reach and is covered with heavy metal mesh. Better safe than sorry…
He reopens his eyes and gently raises his head from the pillow, which produces a wobbly feeling and a sensation of bubbles popping in the brain.
Chloroform, for certain.
He remembers the handsome McLaughlin ambulance and the face of the apple-cheeked nurse. So pretty…
He lifts his arm and sees that he has been dressed in institutional pajamas, striped cotton, not unlike mattress ticking. He rises to his elbows and looks down at his feet: surprisingly, he is still wearing his shoes and socks. Only in a hospital do men wear street shoes and pajamas.
Has he had an accident? Is he in a recovery room at St Paul’s Hospital? If not, then he has been… shanghaied? Certainly not kidnapped; kidnappers are freelance, they don’t run hospitals.
Someone wants him to disappear but hasn’t the stomach for killing (there was enough of that in the war) or, worse, they want information and the killing will come later.
A former acquaintance, a communist by the name of Sparrow, told him that the interrogator’s first order of business is to convince the prisoner that the situation is his own doing. Do not believe them, but do not show it.
Other pointers from Sparrow come to mind: Do not volunteer information. Always appear co-operative. Feign some sort of brain damage…
“What in holy hell are you doing here?”
Was that a voice in his head? No. There is someone else present.
He rolls over and is startled to see what looks to be his reflection across the room. Is the wall a mirror? He can’t tell without his glasses—where are my glasses?
In a panic he lurches left, away from the wall—and to his immense relief there they are, neatly folded, on a white metal bed table that seems to be bolted to the floor.
What sort of hospital bolts things to the floor?
Winding the temples around his ears, across the room he sees an identical bed containing a gentleman in identical pajamas, lying on his right side propped up on one elbow, looking back. The man has a cauliflower ear, so it can’t be a mirror.
“I repeat, what the feck are you doing here?”
“Somebody chloroformed me on Hastings Street and put me in an ambulance. Other than that, I haven’t the faintest idea. Do you know what I’m doing here?”
“You’re that bloody reporter, are you not? The one who writes defamatory columns with idiotic rhymes.”
“I am that man, it is true.”
Looking closely at his roommate, McCurdy recognizes the slightly battered features of Clyde Taggart. He vaguely remembers unkind remarks characterizing Taggart as a human vacuum cleaner sucking up money for Cunning, or something of that sort.
“You’re the snake who wrote that libel about Liberal bagmen. Impertinent bastard. You deserve to be horsewhipped.”
McCurdy vaguely remembers the column, something about suspect donations funnelled through Taggart’s “family business”—always in quotation marks, because with his political activities it would come as a surprise if Taggart entered his office at the Firestone company more than once a year, let alone operated the city’s main supplier of tyres. He remembers that the accompanying doggerel contained the rhymes tyre and liar, whither and slither.
“Ah. I do beg your pardon. Please be assured that there was no animus behind it. I had a column to fill. The truth of the matter is that I had two hours before deadline and it was the only idea that came to me at the time. Surely, Mr Taggart, you’ve encountered such a situation in your line of work.”
Taggart scratches the stubble on his chin, eyes narrowed, evaluating the disparager sitting across from him. McCurdy looks back with complete indifference. Taggart’s face, handsome in a workmanlike way, has taken a punch now and then. His hands, unnecessarily large, are farmer’s hands, the hands of a man who has risen above his class, but not by much.
After what seems like a half-hour, Taggart nods briskly: “Under present circumstances, I accept your explanation. I suggest we set the matter aside.”
“And what are the circumstances, Mr Taggart? If I may fire back your first question, what are you doing here?”
Taggart heaves a sigh. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but I lost my temper with the Attorney General. I threatened to divulge sensitive information, and my outburst was not appreciated. But it stuck in my craw to be thrown away like a bald tyre.”
“And you are in the tyre business, after all.”
“What are you implying?”
“Oh, nothing. What sort of sensitive information do you have to divulge?” As he asks the question, McCurdy feels for a nonexistent notebook. “What sort are we talking about?”
Taggart laughs ruefully. “Listen McCurdy, a liquor-licencing system is mother’s milk to machine politics—plumbing, really. Think of it as an irrigation system for making the garden grow.”
“And the product could be anything from cognac to antifreeze.”
“That has been an issue, I agree. As chairman of the LCB, my task was to minimize the public embarrassment. But all that’s behind us now.”
“Behind us, perhaps—but do you have any idea where we are?”
“Oh, yes. We’re in Woodlands, formerly the Provincial Lunatic Asylum. With so many crazies after the war, the place is under constant renovation. We’re in the isolation annex for men. If you could look through that window up there, you would see the exercise yard at BC Pen. Our building is called Maple Cottage. I know the facility well—served on the building committee for four years.”
“At a staggering per diem, if memory serves.”
“You newspaper people are always carping.”
“Only when there’s something to carp about.”
“Last year, you practically crucified Gordon Cunning over a dead nanny and a Chinese houseboy. It almost cost him the election.”
“In which he resorted to some remarkably dirty tricks. His opponent’s life is in ruins, I understand.”
“In a close election, sometimes a personal attack is the only tactic left. I knew Gordon for years. We played sports together. We were drinking mates.”
“He was fond of martinis, I understand.”
“He was. I could never understand it—a puddle of gin as far as I can tell. But he was a good egg, and my best mate. Stalker is in another league entirely. He has no friends, only henchmen, willing to dirty their fingers on his behalf.”
“You mean he wants to be premier.”
“Oh, that’s the least of it.”
“Then what’s the rest?”
“Let’s call it perpetual incumbency. That’s how they think, McCurdy. No politician wants to envisage leaving office—Stalker least of all.”
“Are you suggesting he’s a midget Mussolini?”
“McCurdy, take it from me, politicians are imitators to the core. No man runs for office who has an original thought in his brain. In politics, the question isn’t What do I believe? but Who shall I imitate? Who do you think Stalker is imitating when he calls an emergency, pushes the need for leadership and makes his adversaries disappear? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”
“Mr Taggart, you paint a gloomy picture.”
Taggart takes a seated position on the edge of his cot, rubbing his head with one hand as though to calm himself down. “And it gets gloomier. Here we are in the booby hatch—and with worse to come.”
“I might have known there’s worse. Fine, spit it out.”
“Woodlands is known for its advanced treatments: fever therapy, insulin shock, radium. Dr Freeman’s speciality is lobotomies. One or two a week, I’m told, plus a few for violent offenders in the BC Pen next door.”
“To stay in practice, I suppose.”
“Apparently it calms them right down. Real bruisers become meek as mice. By the way, you might as well call me—”
Taggart abruptly puts one palm behind his good ear and puts a forefinger to his lips. McCurdy can hear footsteps outside. They come to a stop outside the door, followed by the jingle of keys.
Moving quickly, Taggart lies back under the sheets. “I’m going to pretend to be asleep now. Don’t talk to me.” And closes his eyes.
Seeing no reason not to keep his own eyes open, McCurdy watches as the door opens and in steps a prematurely bald man of about thirty with a ragged moustache he trims with his teeth, in a none-too-clean white shirt with sleeve garters, a greasy tie and an enormous white apron of the type used by lab workers and butchers. He is pushing a metal cart containing a line of syringes on a miniature rack, as well as bottles of pills, a carafe of water and a metal cup. The wheels squeak like an approaching mouse.
McCurdy forcibly reminds himself to appear co-operative and grateful and stupid.
The attendant consults a clipboard. “Let me see—Mr McCurdy, isn’t it? Good to see you’re awake, Ed.”
McCurdy looks up at him, deliberately goggle-eyed. “Are you the doctor? Am I awake?”
The attendant laughs with practised good humour. “You are indeed awake, sir. Can you remember what happened to you?”
“I’ve been asleep. I think I must have passed out.”
A nod of encouragement: “Well done. Sorry to say, but you hit your head when you fell. This is why you were sent to us, for observation, don’t you see. By the way, do you know where you are?”
McCurdy resists saying something snide about what caused him to pass out. (Appear co-operative.) Instead, he scratches his head like Stan Laurel in Mud and Sand: “Let me think… Yes. Gee, I think I hit my head. So that means I must be in the hospital!”
The attendant smiles as though genuinely pleased. “Right again, Ed. I see that it’s all coming back now. What an encouraging sign. Probably all you need now is a good long rest. We all need a good rest now and then…”
The attendant plucks a filled syringe from the wagon and bends down to whisper in McCurdy’s ear in an entirely different tone of voice, giving the patient a full blast of his appalling breath: “You and I know the reason you’re here, Ed. So let me give you a piece of advice: don’t ever think you can sneak out of Woodlands. I’ll be just downstairs—or my assistant will. And you do not want to meet my assistant.”
McCurdy has nothing clever to say in reply. Having abandoned the pretence of care, however momentarily, the attendant has made the situation seem all too real.
“But no need to bother our heads with such matters,” the attendant says. “Believe me, Ed, we will to do everything possible to help you get better.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your help.”
“That’s the spirit!” He pats the patient on the chest, then gently rolls up McCurdy’s pajama sleeve, checks the needle for air bubbles and prepares to inject. “You might feel a bit of a pinch.”
“What are you giving me, Doctor?”
The attendant swabs his arm with alcohol. “Just a relaxant to help you rest. Nighty-night, Ed.”
Before dropping off, McCurdy notes that the attendant seems to be sweating chicken fat. Our man is definitely on something, which might be of use…
He awakens feeling jittery, sweating copiously. He just had a terrible dream, like a Boris Karloff photoplay.
He opens his eyes, looks about and is no longer sure that it was a dream.
He turns his head to the left: excellent, there are his glasses, folded and placed on the table like an old friend waiting patiently, arms crossed. He winds the temples around his ears, and through the lenses contemplates the now-familiar figure of Clyde Taggart seated across the room, on the edge of his cot, watching him.
“About time you woke up, McCurdy. Thought you might be dead.”
“Dead? Why would I be dead?”
“They’re not too particular about dosages here. Sometimes they overdo it.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know that?”
“I was on the board, remember? I hear all the scuttlebutt. I have colleagues still serving, holding their noses for the per diem.”
“You must have a high tolerance for smell.”
“Oh wonderful, an idealist. In any case, the place gave me the creeps then and it still does.”
Thinking of his own profession, McCurdy decides not to press the integrity issue.
“In any case, good morning, Mr Taggart.”
“Actually, it’s past midnight, to go by the light outside.”
McCurdy looks up at the window—definitely too far up to reach without a ladder—and yes, the world beyond the grate is pitch dark.
“He gave me a shot of something. What time was that?”
“I’d say late afternoon.”
“Did he give you a needle as well?”
“No. I pretended to be unconscious, remember? When you’re already out cold, that’s when they worry about overdose—obvious overdose. So they lift your head and place a pill on your tongue. I move it to one cheek and spit it out later.”
“I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather be asleep.”
“That’s what they’d prefer too. They like to keep patients isolated from time and place so nothing riles them up. No tomorrow, no yesterday: a permanent neverland. It means fewer staff are required.”
“You use the word patients but really we’re prisoners, aren’t we?”
“That’s more or less the size of it. Under the circumstances you might as well call me Clyde.”
“I notice that Dr Freeman’s grooming is less than antiseptic.”
“Because that wasn’t Dr Freeman, Ed. That’s Rollins, a semi-trained attendant, one half-step above a thug.”
“And stoned, I notice. I’d say he’s hopped up to the scalp.”
Taggart’s eyes narrow. “How do you know that?”
“His pupils are so dilated you can barely see his forehead.”
“He’s a dope fiend? Needles sort of thing?”
“Probably not. I’d bet on laudanum—he was happy as a clam and sweating like a Turk. Plus the breath, of course.”
“Laudanum is all over the place here. Cheaper than morphine, keeps patients manageable—which, again, saves on staffing costs.”
“I suppose they’ve taken away our clothes.”
“And everything else as well, except our shoes, obviously. So that we can walk over to the main hospital—to the treatment rooms, the electric chair, the padded confinement cells, the operating theatre. Oh yes, they’re fully equipped.”
“Before Rollins came into the picture I seem to remember you mentioning lobotomy. That’s an alarming word.”
“It is indeed. Around these halls they’re as common as haircuts.”
McCurdy looks at the unreachable window, then at the reinforced door at the end of the room. “I’ll say it again: you paint a gloomy picture, Clyde.”
“Oh you think so? Wait until you meet Dr Freeman!”