What Kills Good Men

by David Hood

  Copyright © 2015, David Hood

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

  Vagrant Press

  (an imprint of Nimbus Publishing Limtited)

  3731 Mackintosh St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A5

  (902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Printed and bound in Canada

  NB1207

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Hood, David, 1960-, author

  What kills good men / David Hood.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77108-350-8 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77108-351-5 (html)

  I. Title.

  PS8615.O5114W43 2015 C813’.6 C2015-904322-0

  C2015-904323-9

  Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

  For Josie Hood

  Saturday 21 October 1899

  The face was sickly white and puffed up like bread dough. One eye was missing, something had eaten it. A piece of seaweed caught in the teeth waved like a kite tail. Ellen Reardon took another swig as she peered down from the end of Mitchell’s Wharf. The night sky was overcast, no moon or stars. Shards of city light mirrored in all directions off the harbour chop. She could see well enough. He was dead all right. Ellen looked around for someone to tell. In the distance there were more than the usual hoots and hollers of a Saturday night. The Boers had declared war in South Africa. When Britain turned to the commonwealth, Sir Wilfred Laurier eventually agreed to help. Canada would send a thousand men, one hundred and twenty-five of them would come from Nova Scotia. They would leave Halifax in a few days to join others at Moncton, then Quebec. The Sardinian would take a month to reach Cape Town. Some of the Bluenosers would need that long to sober up.

  Ellen tried to tune out the background. There might have been footsteps on the other side of the warehouse. There was still no one to be seen. Another swig, much bigger this time, burned all the way down to her stomach. Ellen listened again, holding her breath to keep from gagging. Now the night seemed quiet except for the sound of the harbour lapping against the pilings below. Ellen was alone on the end of the wharf. Well, almost.

  Another look convinced her he really was there, that her mind wasn’t playing tricks. He was caught at the hips in the X of two support beams. Ellen knew a thing or two about sailors, not so much about tides. It seemed to be going out. Without anything to keep it afloat, the body would eventually be caught up in the cross members under the wharf, left hanging there along with driftwood and lengths of rope and other bits of harbour flotsam. Better to walk away now, unseen and uninvolved. He wouldn’t know the difference. With most of a bottle, it wouldn’t be hard to find a friend, sneak in someplace and drink themselves to sleep. In the morning all would be forgotten. She took another drink. It was easier now. On the other hand, maybe less company would be better.

  She sat down, boots dangling over the water. There were no holes in her Salvation Army coat, but the buttons were missing. She held it closed with one hand and drank with the other. “So you wanna hear a funny story?” she asked the space between her feet. The one eye stared off to the right at something it couldn’t see. “Sure ya do. Last week Tommy Berrigan was coming out of an alley down on Hollis Street. Maybe you know Tommy?” Ellen took another swallow, gave her conversation partner a chance to offer anything he had on the subject of Thomas Berrigan Jr. His puffy white face bobbed gently in the black water. He didn’t say whether or not he knew Mr. Berrigan. “Well, anyhow,” Ellen continued, “quick as anything Tommy stops and picks up a chunk a hard snow and heaves it for all he’s worth. Catches Jimmy Reagan right in the back of the head. Well, quick as you can spit, Tommy’s back down the alley laughing his fool head off. Guess he figured Hannah would stay on his heels. Did I mention Hannah was with him? Well, she was.” Before Ellen could continue, there was a screech from a rusty hinge followed by a loud thwack as a flimsy door banged shut somewhere behind her. She went quiet, waited for footsteps or voices. If she had to, she would cause a scene, keep the attention on herself so no one would look under the wharf. She took a short sip and tucked the bottle inside her coat. After a minute or so of listening to the water and her own heartbeat, she continued, trying to remember to keep her voice low.

  “So there’s Reagan, flopping around in the street like a hooked fish, cursing and holding his arm. Being hit like that, out of the blue, startled him. He went down pretty hard. Hannah shoulda beat it like Tommy done but she just stood up on the sidewalk, outta the ruts and horseshit, and roared. Reagan didn’t find it so funny. He’s a policeman, case you didn’t know.” Ellen pulled her shoulders up, held still for a moment, then let out a loud belch. A little rum bile came with it and she leaned forward and spat over the end of the wharf. “Didn’t get ya, did I? Sorry ’bout that. Now where was I? Reagan…Yeah, he knew Hannah couldn’t throw that hard, not on her best day. But she wouldn’t say who was with her. So instead of drunkenness, Reagan hung an assault charge on her. Next day I was there for her in the gallery. I know what it’s like to be in police court by yourself. Well, the judge give Hannah thirty days. Said he didn’t like sendin’ women up, but he wouldn’t stand for no violence against an officer of the court. Said he was tired of the inshurrigible…incred…wait, I’ll get it, incorrigible, that’s it, said he was tired of the incorrigible element of the city giving Halifax a bad name. It wasn’t fair what they done, but Hannah knew better than to give the judge any back talk. I been to Rockhead once or twice, ain’t so bad. And one a Hannah’s cousins is a guard. Her time went quick and when she come out Tommy had a bottle to say he was sorry.”

  At that point in her story Ellen remembered she had a bottle of her own. She took another taste and then leaned over a little farther. “Now here’s the best part,” she said. “If Reagan had let Hannah off with a warning like he shoulda done and carried on around the corner onto Upper Water Street, he mighta nabbed whoever it was climbed out a back window of Ronnan Frederick’s warehouse. They took enough rope and pitch to start a navy. But he didn’t and next day Ronnan wanted to know from the police chief what his men was doing while some ship resupplied itself at his expense. Later the chief asked Reagan the same question. Told him an extra month on night duty might sharpen his vision. Serves Jimmy Reagan right and I hope his elbow is still sore.” Ellen spit into the harbour, then took another hit off the bottle.

  The tide was going out. Under the wharf it was beginning to look like the crucifixion, feet together, arms outstretched. There were voices again, bouncing around in the darkness and the rigging of the ships nearby. Still, no one came within sight. She hadn’t had to do much, hike her dress up and bend over a little. Even though he was quick, Ellen had gotten a chill waiting for the sailor to finish and give her the bottle she had set as a price. Drinking and talking had warmed her up. Then a sudden gust of wind off the water made her shiver. She took one last pull from the bottle, then fished the cork out of a po
cket and shoved it in tight. The large hawser lying in a coil on the opposite corner of the wharf would likely do for a night or two. It was awkward work, what with no buttons and half a quart in. Still she managed to bury the bottle in the rope. Looking down again from the end of the wharf, she was still steady on her feet, but she swayed a little from the waist. She could see he would soon be completely out of the water, hung up in the timbers supporting the wharf, arched backward a little, arms hanging down, as if he were prey in the jaws of some larger animal. “Ok, mister,” Ellen whispered, “you won’t have to stay there much longer.” She turned and began to make her way down Mitchell’s Wharf and across Lower Water Street. Her line began to weave a little as she got farther on. You could see from Mitchell’s Wharf straight up Prince Street to Saint Paul’s Church. From there a hard right led directly to the police station at City Hall. Ellen took a more complicated route, weaving through back alleys, squatting for a moment in one of them.

  Detective Culligan Baxter was in his office trying to put together the watch schedule for the coming week. It was not his job, though it used to be. Now it belonged to Sergeant Graham Meagher. Trouble was, Meagher had been down for three days with a nasty flu. The chief asked Baxter. He could have asked someone else, though why bother. They both knew Baxter wouldn’t say no. So at eight o’clock on a Saturday night instead of relaxing at home or taking his wife for a meal at one of the better hotels in town, he was working, or trying to. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Baxter yelled. “What is all the racket about?” He had put down his pencil and gotten up from his desk. He was standing in the doorway of his office looking across a half dozen empty desks toward the front counter.

  Baxter knew the history of the city. Nearly half the original settlers died in the first winter. Injuns got a few more. The survivors hung on. They built Saint Paul’s Church and the Grand Parade in front of it and a town began to huddle round. The Crown kept up a flow of money. Some New Englanders joined in. Eventually a fortress was raised atop the hill to the west. If the Mi’kmaq and the French figured this rough crowd would soon wear itself out and shove off, they were wrong.

  The Halifax Citadel had been built to wreak the havoc of artillery fire on would-be invaders. It rose up over the nine streets that ran north-south across the face of the steep slope that ran down from the fortress to the harbour below. So far no one had bothered to invade the town except the soldiers of the garrison. The town clock that stood just below the Citadel told them and everyone else when it was time to go home.

  Catholicism was eventually allowed in Halifax. The spire of Saint Mary’s Basilica now guided Catholics to worship on a site not far behind Saint Paul’s. Farther on, in the most southern reaches of the city, the well-heeled had created a haven of good manners and wider streets. City Hall used to be down by the water. Now it sat opposite Saint Paul’s on the north end of the Grand Parade. The Anglican pulpit kept a close eye on its new neighbour. Beyond City Hall, as far north as possible, Rockhead Prison faced into the wind that came off the harbour basin. The city commons lay in the flats behind the fort, the open ground between north and south, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant.

  The area between the Citadel and the Grand Parade became known as the upper streets. For the first hundred years, this was no place for decent people. Soldiers who found local women rented rooms in the cheap boarding houses. So did many of the sailors that washed in and out with the tides. All the popular vices were kept in plain view. The business of sin flourished in the upper streets. Naturally there were casualties; drunks face down in the mud or snow. Children nobody wanted abandoned, or worse. Lives lived rough, some ended at their own hand.

  After a while a wind of resistance began to blow against these hard facts of life. First more liquor laws, then a police force, schools, and charities of all sorts working to catch the fallen and prevent others from going down. Of course it had been and still was an uphill fight and not just due to the lay of the land. People were prone to weakness. The likes of Ellen Reardon made no bones about it. Others kept that side of themselves hidden. The upper streets and the city that had grown up around them were contested terrain. Baxter had devoted his life and career to the side of decency. But it was late and he wanted to be getting home.

  The night sergeant, a patrolman, and the woman they were arguing with all went quiet and looked in his direction. “Oh Lord, not tonight, Ellen, I really don’t have time,” Baxter muttered to himself.

  “Detective Baxter,” the sergeant said in surprise, looking up at the wall clock. Finny Mackay couldn’t keep the irreverence out of his voice. “Sorry to have disturbed you, didn’t know you were burning the midnight oil. I’ll wrap this nonsense up quietly.”

  Ellen objected loudly. “Only nonsense in all this is you, Mackay, too fuckin’ fat and lazy to do your job.”

  Baxter had known Ellen from his early days as a night patrolman when she was new to the city and working at Taylor’s Boot and Shoe Factory. Her smile was perfect then, white as the flesh of a Cortland apple. Now it was yellowed and missing a piece. Baxter shook his head at Mackay then looked at Ellen and put a forefinger to his lips. He carefully closed the door to his office and walked slowly toward the counter. The walls of the station were nearly ten years old now, the plaster cracked and yellowed in places. Flattering portraits of the eternal Victoria and the dearly departed John A. refused to take notice.

  Watching him approach kept Ellen and Mackay off each other for a few seconds. In the reprieve, the chief inspector focused on the night patrolman who had not said a word since Baxter had come out of his office. He could see now that it was Kenny Squire, brand new, not a mark on him. Word round the station said he was no more jumpy than was to be expected. Some thought he was pretty smart, at least smart enough not to talk when he should be listening.

  Baxter came up to the heavy walnut counter that divided the inner offices of the station from its small reception area. In his sock feet he stood six feet three inches tall. He placed his large hands on the counter’s freshly polished surface as delicately as a doctor examining a child. He noticed the bandage round his left index finger had gotten dirty. He’d change it when he got home. Before the spell could break and Mackay and Ellen started in again Baxter asked, “Mr. Squire, did you arrest Miss Reardon?”

  Kenny Squire was surprised the chief inspector had any idea who he was, and more surprised that he knew the woman who had approached him on Barrington Street, drunk and demanding he take her in. “No, sir. She…”

  The heat had sped up Ellen’s circulation, but the rush it gave her was not so strong that she was about to let some beginner policeman speak for her. “He didn’t have no reason to arrest me. I got nothin’ to do with that dead man in the harbour.”

  Baxter looked at Ellen now, the ratty dress, the wild hair. At least the coat was clean, even if it didn’t have any buttons. “Miss Reardon, have you by any chance had a drink or two this evening?”

  Ellen tucked in her chin and rolled her eyes up at Baxter. “Do you want to hear what I have to tell you or not?”

  Baxter looked up at the clock; it was twenty to nine. After working all day and a quiet supper with Jane there had been a promise to return within an hour. It had already been two. For twenty-two years she had put up with his mistress. Go home, he thought, let Mackay listen to Ellen, let him finish the schedule too. Put the job second, be a husband first. It was a familiar lecture. When he finished chastising himself, Baxter said, “I swear to God, Ellen, if this is just some ploy to get out of the cold, I’ll see you in Rockhead for six months. Or better still I won’t.”

  “There is a dead man caught up in the timbers under Mitchell’s Wharf. I seen it. I could have kept my mouth shut, let the tide do its work, see whoever put him there get away with it. I’m just trying to do my civic duty. You got no call to be makin’ me out a liar.” Ellen had to hold on to the counter with one hand to keep from swaying. The free hand w
aved and pointed throughout her speech with all the righteous indignation of a Roman senator.

  Unmoved, Baxter looked back and said, “Assuming there is a body, how do you know someone put it there? How do you know this man didn’t jump?”

  “There is no body, Detective,” Mackay said. “She’s just drunk and looking for a place to sleep it off. I’ll put her out.” Mackay took a step. Baxter’s hand raised in a stop sign kept him behind the counter.

  With a thumb on her nose, Ellen waved her fingers at Mackay and then quickly moved out from under the weight of Baxter’s challenge. “That’s your job, you’re the detective, not me,” she said.

  Baxter looked from Ellen to Squire, who responded with a slight shrug of his shoulders. Through a sigh that was more for his wife than himself, Baxter said, “Mr. Mackay, place Miss Reardon in a cell and give her a blanket.”

  “Surely you’re not buying any of this, Detective?” Mackay whined.

  Ignoring the sergeant and turning back to Ellen, Baxter said, “If there is nothing but water under that wharf, I will make you very sorry.”

  “Don’t you threaten me,” Ellen said with equal resolve.

  Mackay came round the counter and took Ellen by an elbow. She quickly pulled free, but kept silent as she followed the sergeant past the counter to a door.

  “Mr. Squire, as soon as I get my coat and a lantern, you and I are taking a walk down to Mitchell’s Wharf.”

  There had always been colder places than Halifax, but come October Halifax always had plenty of bite in its night air. The breeze had been light when Ellen left the waterfront. Now it had really picked up. Baxter and Squire walked quickly with their chins to their chests, collars up and hands deep in their coat pockets as they crossed the Grand Parade. Behind them the sandstone walls and seventy-foot granite clock tower of City Hall watched with dispassionate interest, indifferent to the weather. The building wasn’t just home to the police station. It also housed the police court where Baxter would drag Ellen before a judge if this was just some story she’d made up. Neither man spoke in the few minutes it took to hurry down Prince and across Lower Water Street. They were almost to the wharf when Squire asked, “What do you think we’ll find, Detective?”