The Lady Burns Bright

by Warren Court

  “Yeah. Come this way." He led Armour and Shirley through a beaded curtain. Muffled music was coming from a doorway at the end of the hall. The man knocked twice and then once and it was opened a crack. A ruddy, pockmarked face poked out.

  “Shirley,” the ruddy-faced man said, all smiles. Then he saw Armour. “Who’s he?”

  “Friend of Shirley’s,” the counter man said. “He ain’t no probie. Don’t worry.”

  The man behind the door relented and Armour made way for Shirley to enter first. As he tried to follow her in, the man put his hand to Armour’s chest, stopping him.

  “Not so fast fella. It’s two bits.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” He scrounged around in his pocket and sorted the change.

  “You box?” the man said.

  “No. Well, just against a heavy bag.”

  “You have the frame of a boxer. We run fights, you know. Fella like you could make a few bucks…”

  Armour sorted the change and finally came up with two bits—fifty cents.

  “Looks like you could use it,” the doorman said.

  The speakeasy was quite bright, not what Armour expected. A bouncy rag was playing from a gramophone in the corner.

  There was a gorgeous carved bar with several men standing at it, their feet resting on a polished brass foot rail. There were half a dozen tables, three of them occupied by groups of men. Shirley wasn’t put off by the men-only feel of the place. Armour saw that she had taken a spot at the end of the bar.

  The hum of activity had stopped briefly as Armour, the newcomer, had entered. Now that they’d checked him out, the men went back to their small talk and their drinks.

  The back bar was lit up and stocked with Canadian whiskey, brandy and rum. Armour recognized the bottle that the man at the counter had brought out. It had no label. Though it had caught him off guard, he found that he hadn’t minded it. He just hoped it didn’t make him go blind.

  “What’ll you have?” the bartender asked him. Armour pointed at the bottle of moonshine.

  “Suit yourself,” the man said.

  The men at the bar made way for Armour to get next to Shirley. She had the only stool at the bar and already looked bored.

  She said, “Where’s that drink?”

  “What’ll it be?” Armour asked.

  “Gin.”

  Armour ordered two gin and seltzers, and they grabbed a table. Armour was getting used to the price of things and was aware of the steep price for those two libations on top of the cover charge.

  “Rather pricey in here,” he said to Shirley when they sat down.

  “You want to drink, you have to pay.”

  “Such a nice-looking bar.”

  “Yeah. They hauled it here in the back of my cousin’s flatbed. It’s from a hotel that closed down after the city went dry.”

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  The walls were adorned with pictures. Armour wanted to get up and go through all of them, but he also felt uneasy here and wanted to conclude his business with Shirley as quickly as possible.

  She already looked uninterested. She sat there, her shoulder slumped, and would not look at him.

  “How long have you worked for Mrs. Holt?” Armour said.

  “Three years. She’s nice. Strict but nice. She looks out for me. She said she’s worried for my soul, wants me to go to church. I asked if she meant St. Paul’s, where she goes, but she didn’t mean that. No way she wants to be seen with her maid at St. Paul’s.”

  “Is that where the priests came from?”

  “Heck, yeah. They come see her once a week. One’s the monsignor.”

  “She’s a Catholic, but her husband is a Protestant?”

  Shirley looked around. “Watch what you say. Best not to discuss religion around here.”

  “I see. But he is.”

  “Yes… Or was,” she said. She sipped her drink and pretended to study the men in the far corner, who looked like they were ready to fall out of their chairs from drink.

  “What about this Foley?”

  “I haven’t seen him in two weeks.”

  “You saw him a lot, though, before he disappeared?”

  “No, I mean he hasn’t come by the house, Mrs. Holt’s house, in two weeks.”

  “Why would he come by there?”

  “For a handout.”

  “Hand out?” Armour said, frowning. “He’s got a job, or had a job, down at the harbour commissioner’s.”

  “Yeah, she got him that job. Her husband didn’t want no part of him, but she kept at it. I heard them arguing about it. More than once.”

  “Then why would Foley come by for a handout if he was employed?”

  “I don’t mean a handout for him—” She broke off. “Listen, I ain’t getting into it. Not here.”

  “Where would you get into it?”

  “Nowhere.” She downed the gin and tonic. “I’m going. Thanks for the drink.”

  “I don’t have a picture of Foley. Do you know where I can get one?”

  By reflex, she looked at the wall then quickly back at Armour. Armour saw that it was an involuntary move.

  “No, I would not,” she said. “Don’t follow me again. I don’t want to see you,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. The bartender put his arms on the bar and glared at Armour.

  She left and he sat back down, sipped his drink. The music stopped. He tried to casually look over at the pictures on the wall. He discounted the obvious ones; there were several with just old men in them. The one that Shirley had looked at showed a young man standing next to a horse with a jockey on it. Around the horse’s neck was a wreath of flowers.

  Armour got up to go to the washroom, aware of the eyes that followed him.

  The john was at the end of the hall, off to the right of the bar. There were two porcelain urinals and a single stall with no door. The place reeked of urine. There were no lights on; a series of mesh-covered windows above the urinals provided the only light. In the corner was a metal sink with a dripping faucet. No towels.

  Armour was standing at one of the urinals when a man came in and took the one next to him. He didn’t acknowledge Armour. He was shorter and shabbily dressed.

  “Armour, what the fuck are you doing?” the man hissed through clenched teeth.

  Armour wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “I know you, pal?”

  “Don’t play games. These people are serious. You’d better leave through the back door. They’re fixin’ to roll you.”

  Armour buttoned up and washed his hands at the metal sink. There was a brown stain at the bottom of it where the tap had dripped endlessly. He dried his hands on his backside.

  “I haven’t finished my drink,” Armour said.

  “Fine. Be a fool,” the man said.

  Armour left him and stepped out of the washroom. He paused in the short hallway; he could see the back door with a crack of daylight at the bottom of it. Instead of taking it, he headed back into the speak.

  The scene was the same; the conversation seemed louder now, and more boisterous. The bartender was laughing at something the men at the bar had said. They paid him no mind.

  Armour crossed the room and instead of resuming his seat, he went to the wall of photos and stood in front of the one with the two men and the racehorses. He saw the bartender coming at him in the reflection in the glass. He was holding a stout, thick club raised over his head. The room had gone silent.

  Armour turned quickly and threw a quick jab, knocked the bartender right on his nose. The club clattered to the ground and the man fell back onto his rump. He let out a scream as blood flowed. Chairs were thrown back and the men formed a semicircle and closed in on Armour. He reached down and grabbed the club.

  “Come on, then,” Armour said, and he smashed a glass ashtray on one of the tables. The men backed off, held up their hands. Armour reached behind him and pulled the racehorse photo off the wall.

  “I’m going out the same way I came in,”
Armour said. “Any of you get in my way and you get this.” He held the club up menacingly.

  The men separated, leaving a path to the door back into the druggist’s shop. A more prudent option occurred to Armour, and he fled out the back way, as the man in the washroom had suggested.

  Chapter 10

  Armour dropped the photo and his notebook onto his desk. He heard the door to the outer office close. Must be Olive, he thought. She’d been out when he’d returned.

  “Olive,” he called to her.

  “Yes, Mr. Black? I just stepped out for a bit.”

  Armour went out to see her. “Say, you hear about the disappearance of the harbour commissioner? A Mr. Colin Holt?”

  “Who hasn’t? That was a big story. Don’t hear much about it now. I guess they’ve given up on finding him.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  She gave him another funny look, but it was only for a second. She was getting used to his oddball questions.

  “I think I suffered some sort of amnesia, Olive. Bear with me, okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Black. Well, this Mr. Holt, he took his boat out. Drowned. They found his boat, abandoned, floating on the lake. I put it in the clipping file.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. You asked me to.”

  “Oh, right.” He frowned. “Why would I do that?”

  “You said it was important to keep tabs on any suspicious activity, in case we got involved. Are we involved, Mr. Black?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Please continue.”

  “Well, it was big news, the search for the body. Why would he take his boat out alone, and at night? Then all that stuff about his wife came out—her connection to the Catholic Church while he was a Protestant, and an Orangeman at that. The shrine she has in her basement. It was shameful.”

  “Yeah, I know about that. I haven’t seen it, mind you.” Armour went over to the filing cabinets. “Can you find those clippings?”

  Olive retrieved a manila folder for him and brought it into his office.

  The first clippings were terse: the harbour commissioner had failed to return after reportedly taking his motor cruiser, the Rosalie, out for a spin one warm and calm June evening. There was a photo of Holt, a close-up of the same one in the commissioner’s hallway. The top part of his sash was visible.

  The next clipping was dated the day after; no picture, just a couple of paragraphs. The motor cruiser had been found adrift three miles almost directly off the Toronto Islands. It had been retrieved by an attendant at the city’s dock, where Holt kept his boat. The police didn’t suspect foul play; their working theory was that he had gone out alone, fallen off and had not been able to get back on board. Police commented for the article that that happened at least once a season but usually with sailboats. A search for Holt’s body had been organized.

  Next clipping was one week later; the search for the body had been called off. There was a photo of Mr. Holt and his wife. Armour felt a pang of jealousy looking at them.

  The next clipping announced that Mr. Chambers had been named as the acting commissioner.

  The one after that was a doozy, a scandalous opinion column. Armour read it several times. The clipping had been tagged with a note that said “the Orange and Flower magazine.” He read through it once more; it was a horrific piece of yellow journalism openly attacking the widow Holt and her religious beliefs.

  Armour scratched his head. Why would he have had Olive clip this? He decided not to ask her; he felt he should limit his weird questions to a bare minimum for the time being.

  He told Olive he was going out for a while. It was getting near the end of the day, and he wanted to get to Billy’s before he closed up.

  “Armour, my boy. You feeling better?” Billy said.

  “Yes, very much. Say, Billy, come to think of it, I think I’m experiencing some sort of amnesia. You don’t by chance know where I live, do you?” Armour had looked for his own address in the telephone directory but had not found an A. Black.

  Billy pulled the sodden cigar from his mouth. “No, Armour. Why would I?”

  Armour perused the magazines and other smaller journals while Billy attended to the end-of-the-day trade. He saw the one he wanted, a copy of The Orange and Flower. It was fifteen cents.

  “Little dear for this one, ain’t it?” Armour asked.

  “Specialty item. Never known you to go in for that stuff,” Billy said.

  Armour shrugged and plunked down the fifteen cents. He was busted now. He stepped away from the stand and flipped through the magazine, careful to keep the cover of it pointed towards the ground. On it was a colourized photo of a Black and Tan pointing a club at a group of ragged-looking youth. The headline was Putting Down the Insurrection.

  It was a loyalist magazine. Armour remembered from his perusal of yesterday’s paper that there was an Irish insurrection going on. This magazine was putting forward the British cause.

  Armour folded the magazine to put inside his jacket, and then thought about it and dropped it in a waste bin. He rummaged through his pants pockets; they were empty. He remembered the money Roscoe had given him.

  Back at the office, he found the lock box in Olive’s desk drawer, with the key in the lock, and extracted twenty dollars in ones. She had stepped out, maybe to the ladies’ room down the hall.

  He really should give Roscoe an update, he knew, but what had he found? Just a picture of the man and some loose connection to Mrs. Holt. Was he a lover of hers? Absurd. The man in the photo with the jockey looked to be in his twenties. Mrs. Holt was approaching fifty. He noted with curiosity that Mrs. Holt’s resemblance to Bess, his late wife, was fading. He went over it in his mind. Were they one and the same person? Or maybe because he hadn’t seen his wife in so long, the resemblance had triggered a blackout. That blackout had scared him, losing control like that. He could still feel the cool earth between his fingers. What did it mean?

  He tried to shake the vision from his head, but he had an uneasy sense that it wouldn’t be that easy, that he was going to experience the phenomenon again. And that scared him even more.

  His phone rang. It was Olive. He could hear her talking through the door and into the phone at the same time.

  “Call for you, Mr. Black. It’s Mr. Roscoe.”

  “Put him through.”

  “Black,” Roscoe said.

  “Mr. Roscoe, I was just going to call you.”

  “I need an update.”

  “I’ve been doing some investigating.”

  “What I’m paying you to do.”

  “Correct.”

  Armour noticed how easily Roscoe had slipped into the forceful attitude he had gotten a glimpse of during their brief meeting. Now it seemed, at least over the phone, the real James Roscoe was coming out. Armour doubted that was the man’s name, just as much as he doubted the man was a friend of the missing Foley. The only thing genuine about the man who called himself Roscoe had been the gun in his jacket and the tattoo on his arm.

  “What have you found out?”

  “Well, your friend lived in Cabbagetown. I have a picture of him.”

  “Cabbagetown. That seems right. Where else would a mick live?”

  “Thought he was a friend of yours.”

  “Did I say that? More like an associate.”

  “Anything else you know about him? It seems he was disliked at the harbour commissioner’s office, and that Mr. Holt had taken him on at the request of his wife.”

  “You think the two of them were screwing?”

  “Thought had crossed my mind, but I doubt it. What adulterous wife places her back-door man in the same place where her husband works?”

  “Maybe he’s a cuckhold,” Roscoe said. “Gets his jollies on being humiliated.”

  “What do you know of Holt’s disappearance?”

  “He drowned, didn’t he? Fell off his yacht.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a coincidence, Foley’s employer disappears a
nd then months later so does Foley? Like maybe he had something to do with it.”

  “Could be, but we don’t care about Holt. If Foley bumped him off, it makes no never-mind to us.”

  “Who is us, exactly?”

  “Your client,” Roscoe said.

  Message received. Armour didn’t have to be hit over the head to know he’d just been warned to mind his own business. But didn’t he have a right to know more about his client? Although then again, maybe he didn’t. He shook his head. This was yet another indicator that he had no business calling himself a private investigator. That licence was worthless.

  But a journalist would keep digging, get to the story, follow every lead. Maybe he should see if there were any newspaper jobs out there. Set Olive free and close up the office.

  “I think if I find out what happened to Holt, I might be able to find out what happened to his assistant,” he told Roscoe.

  “I wouldn’t advise it. I hired you to find Foley, not to find out how much water Holt has in his lungs.”

  “His body was never recovered. His boat was found adrift, and they presumed he drowned.”

  Roscoe didn’t say anything. All Armour could hear was a clicking sound. Roscoe was either clicking his teeth or rolling a cylinder full of bullets in that revolver of his. Click click click.

  “Okay, Mr. Roscoe. As you wish. I will concentrate my efforts solely on finding your friend.”

  “Whatever, pal. It’s not like you’re the only private dick in town.”

  “Good day to you.” Armour slammed the receiver down. Damned if that didn’t feel good.

  Chapter 11

  The city’s harbour was east of downtown next to a sugar refinery plant. The air was heavy with the revolting combination of refined sugar and industrial exhaust fumes. There was a dock that stretched out two hundred feet into the lake. There were cranes and other machinery around it, and a guard post and chain link fence to keep people out. There were men on the other side of the fence, and they eyed Armour suspiciously. Armour went to the gate.

  Two longshoremen came to the gate to intercept him.

  “Excuse me. I’m looking for the Holt yacht. I understand it’s moored down here.”