Bob ignored Jack’s baiting. Jack hadn’t touched his money yet, and I still had questions to put to him. What’d happened in the woods? How’d he gotten away and what had prompted this risky heist? I was close to asking when he rose and gathered his cash and the valise.
“I’d stay away from the Bank of England were I you,” said Jack. “Try not to spend it ostentatiously. That son of a bitch Adams’ll claim double what we stole to the cops and tell the ’papers the same tale of woe for his insurance. The world was ever thus. Now, I know a grand place to unwind, a favourite of the chief of police, but not of a Sunday. Come along, it’s on me.”
Bob locked up and we met down on the street.
“You certain this is a good idea? Shouldn’t we split up?” I said. “They’ll be looking for three men together.”
“Not where we’re going.”
JACK HAILED A TAXICAB at the corner.
“Mountain,” he said as we got in.
We drove onto Sherbrooke, passed the campus, and headed for the Golden Mile, making another right up Mountain. The district was beginning to fray at its edges as the city encroached upon it; all the rich families were abandoning the ancient preserve of wealth for Westmount and beyond. Good riddance. Jack barked a command and we stopped in front of a mansion that had seen its fortunes fade but was still in better than decent trim, almost respectable and discreet, with only the slightest piratical cast.
“Hell of a cathouse,” I said.
“The best in town.”
We mounted the flagged stone steps to a portal engraved with a coat of arms. In response to a soft bell chime a pretty housemaid opened the door. Our merry crew was received in a narthex of mirrors and ersatz gold. With this decor, there was no mistaking the nature of the house. Within moments a dreadnought of a madam steamed down the curving staircase to meet us. She bore an uncanny resemblance to Marie Dressler. Jack bowed and kissed a rose-gloved hand. Powdered and pink, the matron keeled and tittered: “You cheeky thing. It’s been far too long since you were here. I’d almost given up on you. And how delightful, you’ve brought some gentlemen along. How very lovely.”
The madam had a pleasing, musical laugh, wet red lips, shark’s eyes. Her perfume began to provoke a sneeze.
“What would you wish for tonight?” she asked.
“Elope with me,” Jack said.
She batted him away with a furled fan. Bob stood and postured to my right. The bouquet of the madam’s toilet water was now creeping deeper into my olfactory apparatus. Hold it in. Hold it. I fumbled for a cigaret as our group was swept into a sitting room done up in the fin-de-siècle manner, with electric globes made to resemble gas lamps and a player piano. Bob headed to a long divan against the wall and lounged, his manner supercilious. I bit at a thumbnail. It’d been a tiring day by any measure. Thick nude odalisques writhed in heavy gilt-framed paintings hanging over the mantelpiece. Jack conducted a whispered business with the madam in the corridor, and I sneezed into the handkerchief he’d given me during the movie-house hold-up. I sat in my overcoat and with my palms rubbed at my unshaven face, feeling consumptive, rheumatic, hollow. As I lit my cigaret Jack entered the room with four trollops in tow. A maid brought a tray of canapés, followed by several buckets of ice and wine on a cart surmounted by an enormous bottle of Champagne. Nine hundred and eighty-five dollars was a good year’s pay for some.
“Ladies,” gestured Jack.
The four girls positioned themselves around the salon in studied artless arrangements.
“We are,” Jack said, “representatives of a young men’s Christian temperance society and have come here tonight to gauge the pernicious effects of this devilishly bubbly stuff on winsome young maidens. Would you care to aid us?”
The girls gave a united cheer of agreement. Each was done up in a manner anachronistic with the room’s fittings. They sported kohled eyes and wore black stockings rolled down to the knee, slim-cut short dresses, high-heeled shoes, and long-looped paste pearl strands around lithe white necks. Jack began building a pyramid of crystal goblets, then uncorked the massive Jeroboam and with two hands poured its contents over the construction. Beside me the young blonde screwed a cigaret into her ebony holder. She was blue-eyed, her face made up into a pout, a tempting indifferent moue. It was rare I frequented whores, loath to catch syphilis. This time was different, somehow, Jack paying the piper and calling the tune, conducting a farce that might banish Laura from my thoughts. Always she’d played prude with me, during my failed courtship, but I’d suspected her nonetheless: she’d protested too much. Since last October, a good year ago, nearly anything might’ve happened. Who was she with at that dance Jack had mentioned? Where was she right now? I shook my head and looked over to my paid sympathizer. She looked back and blew smoke into my face.
Bob rose and revealed a talent besides painting and armed robbery, laying down jazz on the piano, singing out in a nice tenor: “I’ve got some good news honey, an invitation to the Darktown Ball. It’s a very swell affair, all the highbrows will be there. I’ll wear my high silk hat and my frock tailcoat, you wear your Paris gown and your new silk shawl. Ain’t no doubt about it babe, we’ll be the best dressed in the hall.”
Wine went ’round. A pair of the girls got up and turned a two-step together. The one next to me emptied her glass in a swallow. I leaned over to fetch some more, charging her goblet and then my own, following her lead by pouring it down my neck. Jack took down a pornographic engraving from the wall and placed it on his whore’s lap, the better to sniff cocaine from. My blonde went and joined them. Bob switched the player to a printed roll and the instrument churned out ridiculous hurdy-gurdy blather. Bob danced with the pair of trollops on the rug. My girl came back licking her lips.
“How much do you charge for a kiss?” I asked.
She eyed me, took a puff, and exhaled more smoke.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
A pause while she thought about it.
“Celeste,” she lied at last.
“Heavenly,” I said.
I lit a Consul. Jack handed over the picture frame and I took some of the drug. The divine Celeste regarded me dully. The print on my knees showed a scene from the Satyricon, or the Bible.
In my mind molecules began to break apart like Champagne bubbles. What was his name, the fellow who’d split the atom? A Cambridge man, from New Zealand. He’d taught at McGill for some time. Rutherford. All we needed was a calliope and a dancing bear to complete this circus with the pig-faced woman from county Cork to round it out. Science baffled! Zoologists stumped! A wonder to behold!
“Hey,” I shouted at Jack over the growing din. “The Midget King of Montreal has a son and heir. He’s showing himself and the bairn at His Majesty’s palace on Rachel, a nickel a gander. A toast!”
I raised my glass. Jack guffawed.
“I’ve seen him,” said Jack’s blonde.
“That so?”
The devil was on horseback in my bloodstream now. I drank more wine.
“The most darling little man,” said Jack’s blonde. “He’s a count or a baron, I think. And his wife’s from Europe.”
“The Midget Queen?” asked Jack.
“I believe so.”
Here Celeste turned and gave me a strangely sweet smile, one nearly genuine.
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” I asked her.
“A ghost?”
“Yeah. Been busy tonight?”
“I’ll say,” she said. “We had that fat baseballer in here.”
“Who, Babe