The Man Who Killed by Fraser Nixon

Italians?”
    â€œIf they don’t I’ll eat my hat. The only thing the government’s more frightened of than Reds is Anarchists. They’ll make an example of that pair, count on it. Remember, no one ever caught whoever it was bombed Wall Street a few years back. If they want to keep the Babbitts and the booboisie happy and sinking their pennies into fly-by-night stock they’ll gas them or hang them or put a bullet in their brains.”
    â€œWhat, no electric chair?” I joked.
    â€œWhat brings you to town?” Jack said, sinking the last of his wine.
    â€œKeep it to yourself but I’ve got a hot line on a dehydrated vegetable soup company. Thanks again for the tip-top tipple. Be seeing you, fellas.”
    He whistled a waiter over, settled his bill, shook our hands, and was gone, taking his bulk and gravity with him but leaving his book behind.
    â€œNow Mick, me lad, you must excuse me but I’ve a few appointments to keep. Where can I reach you?”
    â€œI’ll probably get a room at the Occidental.”
    â€œWhat name?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œUse your imagination.”
    â€œSmith,” I said.
    Jack sighed.
    â€œWell, if you need me I’m under Standfast at my hotel. Ring me tomorrow and keep the evening open. We’ll meet. Oke?”
    â€œYou bet.”
    Jack popped his hat on and stood up. I showed him the palm of my hand so he shrugged and slid out of the bar. I quickly paid the tab and followed, wanting to see if I could shadow him and get a sense of the larger picture, his connections in this mess. I knew of Brown the Customs man, Bob, and now Charlie the lawyer in Outremont. There was the missing driver Martin and the Lord knows who else. What I really wondered about was the identity of Jack’s bosses. How was he fixed up? I skulked out onto the street and watched Jack cross Sherbrooke only to climb the steps up into the Mount Royal Club, where the burly gorilla at the door let him through. Perhaps there was a way I might insinuate myself inside, fake moustache, tradesman’s stoop. No. I had none of the play-actor in me. I couldn’t pull off any foolishness of that sort. Theatricals were one of Laura’s delights, a taste she shared with Jack: charades, dramatic readings, songs around the piano. A suspicion slowly metastasized within me, and I chewed off a fingernail, chopping the crescent of keratin between my teeth. Laura’s father was a greybeard at the Mount Royal. I swallowed the nail and walked to the station.
    THAT AFTERNOON WAS spent getting my grip and renting a room. I bought a sheaf of magazines from a newsstand to while away my life, the green-covered American Mercury, Harper’s, The Goblin from Toronto for a laugh and Black Mask for thrills, plus a book of bathing beauty photos in case of self-abuse. At the Occidental I found a plain and quiet room where I put my few things in order. The hidden picture of Laura and myself fell to the floor. The snap was worn at the edges from where I’d handled it. A moment out of time.
    I picked up the telephone and asked the operator to put me through to the Dunphy residence. A maid answered. My throat constricted and I severed the connection. I sat on the bed in my shirtsleeves with my head in my hands. Jackass. Too old to be playing childish games of love. She’d led me on, Old Nick knows why, and finally dropped me without a qualm after all the devious stratagems I’d concocted to slip her lovelorn letters, all the artfully orchestrated chance encounters in social settings. I’d been stealing morphine and selling it to finance my romantic campaign. Was it any wonder that after Laura pitched me I began taking my own medicine? Soon enough I was skipping lectures and duties at the Royal Victoria. The money melted away. I became careless and was caught out. Or near enough. And no Jack to save me. Same as in the years after the war: he vanished.