The Lady Burns Bright

by Warren Court

  “Beat it,” one of the men said. He rolled a toothpick back and forth along his lips as he spoke. He stood there unblinking, staring at Armour.

  Armour was not perturbed.

  The other man, a shorter one with a rounder face, spoke. “What do you want with it?”

  “I’m writing an article for the Orange and Flower magazine. It’s a terrible thing what happened to Mr. Holt.”

  “I said beat it,” the bigger man said. Armour saw him open his hand, and down out of his sleeve dropped one piece of a pool cue, the rear piece that was fatter and heavier than the tip. Armour always thought that made a hell of a weapon. What must it feel like to have that end of a cue come up against your head? If he kept at it, he just might find out.

  “Hey, fellas, I don’t want any trouble. Just want to know where that yacht is.”

  “Down the pier, there,” the smaller man said, indicating. Beyond the dock was a three-hundred-foot pier that ran parallel to the shore. It looked disused and was not guarded.

  Armour nodded his thanks at the smaller man and left.

  Despite his assurance to Roscoe that he was going to focus on finding Foley, Armour was determined to find out what had happened to Holt. The timing of their two disappearances was too great a coincidence to ignore. Especially if Foley was a suspect. And how could he not be?

  The last vessel moored at the dock was a motor cruiser. Armour figured its length was fifty feet. The hull was painted black, and the cabin was gleaming lacquered wood with white trim. Rosalie was written on the transom. A Canadian ensign flew from the jackstaff.

  The beautiful vessel was out of place in this working harbour, but Armour guessed the commissioner could moor his boat here free of charge. There was a gangplank leading up to the side of the rear deck, where there was a two-foot section that could be swung inwards to allow easy boarding. A metal sign affixed with rope that ran from a handhold on the cabin to a stern cleat said Off Limits by Order of Toronto Police.

  “Help you?” said a slender man in greasy work coveralls and a grease-stained orange leather cap.

  “This is the Holt boat? The one that was found adrift?”

  “It was. I mean it is. You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re the one who got in all that trouble. I recognize your face from the papers.”

  Armour said nothing.

  The man looked affectionately at the yacht and shook his head. “It’s not right what happened.”

  “His body was never found?” Armour said.

  “No, but it still might be,” the man said. “If he did go into the lake, that is. I’ve been working down here for thirty years. Plenty of people have gone missing. Undercurrents swirl things around. Body gets snagged on something down there, but eventually it’ll come up.”

  Armour grimaced at the image.

  “No, it isn’t pleasant,” the man said. “The body will be as big as three men when they find it. Filled with gas and water.”

  Armour said, “What about his boat? Where was it found?”

  “Over that way.” The man pointed west towards the Islands. “But further out in the lake. When I noticed his yacht was not where it was supposed to be, I called my boss.”

  “Why would you do that? Don’t boats go in and out all the time?”

  “Not Mr. Holt’s yacht. He never took it out. Too big for him. I think he was afraid of cracking it up trying to dock it. Plus. . . By the way he got on and off it I had a feeling he might be afraid of water. When I saw it was missing, I knew something was wrong. Next morning, I took a work boat out and found it adrift. No way he would ever take that out at night. And never alone.”

  “If he never took her out, what did he use her for?”

  The man got closer and looked around for eavesdroppers. “Brought his girl down here.”

  Armour knew he didn’t mean Mrs. Holt. “What do you know about his girl?”

  “She was pretty. A dancer, I think. In some big show uptown. You know, a real flapper. I got one of the playbills back at my shed.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  The man led Armour to a wooden building. Its double doors were open and in the middle of the cement floor was a basset hound that looked as old as the earth. The animal did not even lift its head when the man led Armour in. There were several workbenches, a small desk and one chair. On the benches were torn-down motors and winches and blocks in various states of repair. An assortment of tools hung on the walls, and the place smelled pleasantly of grease and gasoline and skill.

  As the man rummaged through the desk, he kept talking to Armour. “When I found his yacht, she was about a kilometre offshore. She would have eventually hit the rocks on the north side of the island. We had a blow coming in that day. I went on board, noticed the ignition was in the on position but the motors were dead.

  “Was there gas in the tank?”

  “About half a tank. I saw this down in the cabin.” He handed Armour a piece of paper. “I didn’t want Mr. Holt to be embarrassed. He was a nice man. Didn’t mean anything to me that he had girlfriends.”

  “There was more than one?”

  The man shrugged. Armour glanced down at the paper. It was a playbill for Melanie’s show, The Adorable Saucettes.

  “That’s her, the girl on the trapeze, though it doesn’t look like her too much.”

  “It’s close enough.”

  “You’ve seen that show?” The man regarded Armour with interest. “What’s it like? I been meaning to go but don’t want to leave Luther here alone.” The dog finally raised his head at the mention of his name.

  “Can I keep this?”

  “Yes, please do. I feel sick having it around. I was thinking of burning it.”

  “The engines were off but the key was in the on position?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And there was a full tank of gas?”

  “Yeah. Assuming he was alone, I figure he was fiddling with the throttle, stalled the motors. Couldn’t get them started again. Went out onto the back deck, tried to get the engine bay hatch off. It was locked, but he pulled at the handle. His hand slipped and he was flung backwards, went ass over teakettle into the drink.”

  Armour smirked; he couldn’t help it.

  “Stranger things have happened,” the man said.

  “I’m Armour, by the way.” He stuck his hand out.

  “Garrison,” the man replied. He had a shake that could bend metal.

  Armour was about to leave when there were shouts from across the harbour where the two longshoremen he’d talked to worked. Armour could see a dredger being shepherded alongside the dock by a bull-nosed tug.

  “Here they come again. It dies down when the dredgers are out in the channel.”

  “What does?”

  “The fights. I went over to see them the first couple of times. Now it’s just a nuisance.”

  “Who’s fighting?”

  “The unions, the wops, the scabs. The cops jump in when it gets too rough. The union wants on those dredgers. The harbour commissioner says they have a contract with a private company. They don’t want to let the unions in.”

  Armour could see a large group of men gathered around the gate where he had been rebuffed. They had not been there before; two hundred men would have caught his eye. They’d just materialized.

  “They keep a few on to maintain the picket. The rest go to the park to drink. They come back when the dredgers come in.”

  Armour thanked Garrison and left. He headed towards his car but then decided to go see the spectacle. From a safe distance, of course. The shouting increased as he got closer.

  “Fucking scabs! Get your own job.”

  Armour could see a thin line of police, only a handful, between the picketers and the front gate. On the other side of the gate were the two men he’d encountered earlier, now backed up by several more who were all armed with clubs and bats. Armour saw the bigger man with his pool cue, p
oised and ready to strike. The smaller, more helpful of the two had a tire iron.

  There were some bored newsmen watching, making notes occasionally. A photographer had set up a camera on a tripod but was standing idle, his arms draped over his equipment. Waiting for the fight to start, no doubt.

  Armour drifted closer to the group of picketers. The noise of their protest increased as the dredger was positioned against the pier.

  “Scabs!” a man close to Armour shouted.

  “We have families too, you know. Those are our jobs you’re taking,” another one yelled.

  “How long has this been going on?” Armour asked a man standing next to him. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-one but he had a confident look about him, one of authority. A sign resting on his shoulder said Union Jobs for Union Workers.

  “We’ve been at it a month,” the man said. Armour detected a slight accent but couldn’t place it. “We were going to get this contract, then they pull this shit and bring in this outside company. I heard most of them don’t even live in the city. The harbour commissioner promised us the work, then he backtracked.”

  “Colin Holt?”

  The man nodded, scowling. “I hope the bastard is rotting down there in the muck. Here we go,” the man said. The dredger was now tied off and its crew were disembarking. There was a large metal shed on the pier from which more armed men emerged. “They make a big show of taking these scabs through the lines and back. It’s gonna get ugly,” he told Armour.

  The man now held his sign up high and started to join in the protest. There were more men pressing around Armour now, and he realized he wasn’t where he wanted to be. They were pressing up behind him. The shouting in his ears was deafening.

  “Scab, scab, scab!”

  The men behind the gate started unchaining it. Twenty men with bats were guarding eight workers coming off the dredger.

  There was more jostling from behind. The man Armour had been talking to spun around. “For Christ’s sake—they got reinforcements.”

  Armour turned and saw a phalanx of men, armed with bats and chains and other weapons, descending from the park across the road from the harbour. The picketers were boxed in. The cops moved to the side and backed up while the group behind the gate came out, bats swinging. Armour noticed that even the workers who’d come off the dredger were armed.

  Armour stood his ground, ready to defend himself, as the gathering turned into pandemonium. There were fistfights, but none of them was man to man; it was all three on one, four on one. The picketers had one of the strike breakers on the ground and were pummelling him with their feet. A strike breaker had a picketer in a headlock, while another man battered his back until he fell to the ground. Blood spirals rose in the air and broken teeth spilled on to the asphalt.

  A man carrying a black baseball bat came at Armour’s new friend, and Armour saw the man give as good as he got. The man with the bat dropped it, overwhelmed by the savage attack the young man inflicted on him. Then Armour saw another man come into the fray; Armour recognized him. It was Tom from the theatre. He was coming up behind Armour’s new friend, armed with a Bowie knife. Tom grabbed the slender man by the shoulder and was fixing to run him through.

  Armour stepped in and brought the edge of his hand down on Tom’s wrist. The knife clattered to the ground. Tom spun around, still holding on to the younger man. Armour kicked the knife away.

  They didn’t exchange pleasantries. Instead, Armour knocked Tom in the mouth, like he had the night before. This time Tom was ready; his head bobbed back from the blow but it did not faze him. He spat blood and let go of the slender man to raise his fists. Armour and Tom circled each other.

  Armour moved in, crouched low and ducked under Tom’s swinging arms. He lashed out at the big man’s stomach and hit pay dirt. The man could not protect his gut, and Armour felt his punches hit home. Tom doubled up and Armour finished him with a roundhouse to the ear, sending him sprawling to the pavement.

  There were whistles and more shouts as an army of mounted police came galloping at them, clubs raised high.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Armour said. He pulled his new friend free of the throng, and, jumping over prone bodies, they ran into the park. People were running everywhere. The signs they’d held earlier had been tossed aside.

  Armour and the young man ducked behind the public washrooms. The crowd ran past them, chased by cops on horseback.

  The two men waited quietly together for a few minutes, then crossed the field to Armour’s car. Armour’s hands were shaking but he managed to get his Model T fired up. They could see men returning to the harbour, holding their noses and bloody lips, undeterred by the attack of the strike breakers and the cops.

  “I should go back,” the stranger said.

  “You’ll get locked up or worse,” Armour said.

  “Name’s Sean. Sean Reagan,” the man said.

  “Armour Black.” They shook hands. “You’re cut pretty badly,” Armour said. The man’s shoulder was slashed open.

  “Yeah. Maybe I should get this seen to.”

  “Get in,” Armour said.

  As they drove away from the docklands, they passed ambulances going the other way.

  “I saw what you did. That big fella was going to do me good. Thanks,” Reagan said.

  “I met him last night.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. At a show. Who’s he work for?”

  “The wops. Who else? They’re the ones that own the company that’s doing the dredging.” Reagan spit out the open window. “Bastards. All of them.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  “Local one-fourteen dockworkers’ union. We’ve been in dustups with the Italians before. They bring in heavies from Montreal, New York even, but never anything like this. You saw that army come down on us. And then the cops, there with their bleedin’ cavalry like a bunch of Black and Tans ready to run us down. Don’t think we don’t know what that is for. It’s for what’s going on in the home country. Back in Ireland.”

  “You’re Irish?”

  “Yeah. Can’t you tell?” Reagan looked over at him now. “Say, what are you? Why were you there? You a journo?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Pull over,” Reagan said. As quick as a flash, he had a knife against Armour’s throat.

  “Whoa! Take it easy, pal.”

  “I said pull over, fella, or I’ll cut your throat.”

  Armour pulled to the curb.

  “Now tell me who you are. You’ve been sent to infiltrate us—you’re with the bloody cops.”

  “No, I’m private. Trying to find a missing person. I was at the yacht club trying to learn more.”

  “Find who?”

  “Take the knife away from my throat and I’ll tell you.”

  Reagan removed the knife and Armour rubbed his neck where the blade had pressed against it.

  “I’m looking for a man named Foley. I think he’s tied in with Mr. Holt’s disappearance.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “I can’t give you his name. I’m just trying to locate him. You know him?”

  “Us micks, we all know each other, right?” Reagan laughed. He closed his knife and put it away. “Foley, he’s a shifty fella. Wants to be a big shot. Always flashin’ money around. Plays the ponies, you know. You got any leads on him?”

  “Not yet. I was at the harbour club. I think the two are related—Holt drowning and then his assistant up and quitting… and disappearing.”

  “Why won’t you tell me who hired you?”

  “Client confidentiality. To be honest, I don’t know him. I think he gave me a false name.”

  “Could be the wops.”

  “Why?”

  “Giuseppe Pappanillo would love to get his hands on Foley.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Some kind of private investigator you are. You don’t know Pappanillo? Dago crime lord. Making a fortune r
unning booze to the Americans. Those were his boys today at the dock, protecting those scabs.”

  “I don’t know if it’s the Italians who hired me or not,” Armour said.

  “You afraid to say wops? They call us micks, the Jews kikes. You’re a WASP; I can tell. All buttoned up, playing holier than thou.”

  Armour wasn’t sure what he was anymore. He never went to church, never thought about praying. Since the day he’d buried his wife, he’d turned his back on religion for good. Did it make him an atheist? No. He enjoyed hating God. If he didn’t believe God existed, where would that hate go?

  “Where can I drop you?”

  “I’ll get out here. Sorry about your neck. I’m a little worked up.”

  Armour nodded.

  “Piece of advice: never work for a man you don’t know who or what he is. No matter how much he’s paying you. That makes you no better than the ladies walking the street. That’s why we formed a union. We know what we stand for.”

  “I understand.”

  Reagan extended his hand.

  “I owe you. You ever need anything, just drop by the Irish Association Hall in Cabbagetown and mention Sean Reagan. They’ll get word to me.”

  Chapter 12

  Armour was standing in a doorway two blocks up from the Pegasus, waiting for Melanie. A Duesenberg pulled up in front of the theatre and she got out. She paused at the door of the car and spoke to the driver. From his vantage point, Armour couldn’t see who it was. He hoped it wasn’t Tom. Would he forgive her for putting a gun to his head? He’d seemed to take it all right that night.

  “Okay, thanks, Burt. See you at midnight. You sure you don’t want come backstage?” she said to the unseen driver.

  Armour couldn’t hear the reply, but was thankful it wasn’t that goon she had been with.

  “Okay. I’ll leave word with Tony in case you change your mind,” Melanie said.

  She watched the Duesenberg leave. Armour approached.

  “Bit soon, isn’t it?”

  “Hey,” she said. “You scared me there. Bit soon for what? I’m late, actually. Should have been in makeup ten minutes ago.”

  “I meant a bit soon to be getting over the death of your boyfriend.”