The Man Who Killed Read Online Free PDF Page B

life after death. Relics from the Franklin Expedition had been discovered in the high Arctic, deep in the Northwest Territories. Babe Ruth would be in town tomorrow, tickets starting at four bits. Nothing about a gunfight in the woods along the American border. I doubted that the morning Star or Gazette had reported anything; it’d been far too late to meet their deadlines. The French afternoon ’paper was similarly uninformative, devoted almost entirely to a headless torso found in Repentigny.
    No news was bad news. This pointed to the worst option: the ambush had been a business vendetta. Jack and myself were betrayed and I wasn’t safe, not by a long chalk. If he’d been snared they would murder him but first turn the screws. Names of colleagues and accomplices. Jack knew where I lived, how I moved about. I was a loose end. I’d be tied up in a shroud.
    Unless Jack had been killed in the fusillade. I shuddered. He’d told me to give him a week on the outside if anything went wrong. A week was too long and ninety-odd dollars and change would leave me with only enough for a ticket out. No. The danger was real, and my mouth went dry.
    The next beer came lukewarm. The ’tender gave me the evil eye. Turning to the fight pages I smoked, drank, and thought, feeling a total wreck. Split the difference and give Jack three days to resurrect himself. Three days underground. First order of importance: new lodgings. Felt myself nodding over my cups and killed the ale. When the barkeep came again I paid and asked for a spool of twine, which he foraged for with an ill grace. I went to the jakes and wrapped the Webley in newspaper and tied it so the package looked like meat from the butcher’s. I went out to the street.
    Across the way a carbuncle of people waited for a streetcar and when the trolley crashed to a stop I joined them in getting on. We went over the canal and I jumped out at Peel. There was a bathhouse nearby with a tailor’s attached where I could have my suit mended while I made my toilette. After that I’d find a new place to stay. It wasn’t advisable to return to my old flop, considering. I’d only left behind several textbooks, a Gladstone bag with a change of clothes, and my overcoat. No, Goddammit, something else: a tintype of Laura and myself on College Street, hidden between the pages of The Mauve Decade.
    We’d been walking down the sidewalk last year, early September, when a shill outside a camera shop snapped a photograph and handed me a card. I’d had no mementos of her. She’d never written me a letter, never compromised herself in any way. What’s to compromise? I’d asked, we haven’t done anything scandalous. Only ever with extreme reluctance would Laura meet me and only after continued persistence on my part. I didn’t see it then, how little she cared. I’d returned to the studio a few days later for the developed print.
    In the photograph she wore a silvery sable fur and a cloche hat like Theda Bara. I was in my three-piece suit, since pawned, and spats. She’d turned to the camera with a look of withering contempt, an expression I’d get to know too damn well. By Thanksgiving it was all over between us, such as it’d been. Burned to the ground. As a solace I began my other pursuit at the hospital. Incredible what a mere year wrought. Who was responsible for my fate? I’d thought that I was myself, until I fell in love.
    At the bathhouse they issued me a towel and the key for a locker. I undressed, stored the package with the gun, and had the porter send my suit, shirt, and collar next door. In the hot room a burly lazar slept and an old bird peered at a wilted Police Gazette through steamed-over spectacles. I sweated out every atom of cordite, cocaine, and booze and then went for a cold plunge. Refreshed, I prepared to leave; my suit came back in decent trim with a note apologizing for not being able to remove