Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,
Which we are about to receive from thy bounty
Through Christ Our Lord.
Vera Maude mumbled her own made-up words and her father nudged her under the table.
“Ah, men,” she concluded.
Everyone grabbed one of the dishes and her father cut into the roast. Plates were passed around. Vera Maude’s came back with a radish on it.
“Gee, thanks a bunch.”
— Chapter 9 —
THE THIRD PAGE
RIDING WITH THE
BORDER CITY BLUES
THIS WEEK:
A DULL ROAR
Prohibition means there will always be more battles than there will be men to fight them, and the police in the Border Cities know that. Sometimes the best they can do is just keep things down to a dull roar. They do this first by picking off the low-hanging fruit.
Last Thursday a fellow burst into the station claiming his car had been stolen. While he was giving his statement a call came in about an abandoned vehicle: a patrolman had found a car with its front bumper joined to a telephone pole. He also found a trunk full of illegal beer. The fellow tried to pin it on the alleged car thieves but after the police applied the right pressure the fellow confessed to being in the ‘transport business.’ He had jumped the curb trying to avoid a child in the street and rather than get caught with wet goods, he decided to report the car stolen. He was charged and given a court date.
Trying to stop the flow of liquor in the Border Cities can be a bit like trying to hold back the tide with a mop and pail. There are a number of hotel bars and roadhouses that the police watch in a random rotation. Last Friday night the Dominion Tavern’s number came up. Undercover police discovered strong beer on the premises and the owner was fined $200. He put it down to the cost of doing business.
That was an easy one. However, simple exercises like this can easily turn violent. One night last week Officer Allan Corbishdale was patrolling the alley behind the streetcar waiting room at Ferry Street when he heard an engine fire up and pull away. He suspected foul play. When they refused to halt the officer broke into a sprint and jumped onto the running board. Corbishdale later told the Star that the driver, Clayton Pastorius, then ‘stepped on the gas.’
Corbishdale climbed into the rear of the vehicle where he discovered the reason for the driver’s anxiety: six cases of illegal beer. When Mr. Pastorius’s accomplice, Alex Renaud, reached back and started getting rough with Corbishdale, the officer struck him over the head with his nightstick. Renaud, the officer said, then wrested the club from his hand and returned the favour. Frustrated, Corbishdale drew his revolver and fired a warning shot through the roof of the car.
Renaud remained aggres-sive, Corbishdale said, and the officer was eventually forced to strike him over the head with the butt of his revolver, rendering him unconscious. With the vehicle approaching the Prince Edward Hotel, Corbishdale knew he had to put the brakes on this caper.
He fired another shot that shattered the windshield and caused Pastorius to briefly lose control as he turned onto Park Street. The vehicle finally came to a stop at the front steps of St. Alphonsus School. The next day the Sisters had a few things to say about the broken glass and skid marks on the front lawn.
There is this black and white world of thieves and smugglers and then there is the shadier world of the confidence men. This afternoon Mr. Karl Schwab of Janette Avenue reported to police that a bogus raid had been made on his home and the fraudulent officials hauled off three cases of legitimately-obtained whisky.
Watch for this space in next Saturday’s Star to discover how it all played out.
“Hold on to this,” Montroy said to Corbishdale as he folded the newspaper and tossed it onto the dashboard. “Your mother might want it for her scrapbook.”
They were sitting in the new police flyer, a sleek, sprawling Studebaker Six. Corbishdale was behind the wheel and Montroy was sitting next to him, going over the events of the past thirty-six hours, bringing the rookie up to speed.
“Yeah, and so Schwab arrived at the station with his tongue wagging like a setter’s. He collapsed in the chair by my desk, mopping his forehead with a damp handkerchief and clutching his documents. He told me two men — he noticed a third waiting in the car running outside — came knocking on his door. They said they were licensing department officials, flashed some ID, and then proceeded to frisk the place. When they found the whisky, Schwab protested. He told them it was legal.”
“Why didn’t he just show them his papers?” asked Corbishdale.
“Said he got flustered and forgot where he kept them. Wouldn’t have done any good anyway. A few minutes into their search he knew that they weren’t real inspectors.”
“How?”
“The cut of their suits and the make of the car. He was smart not to call them on it. He could have got hurt. Anyway, what he kept telling me was that he had nothing to hide. He said he shared some of his whisky with a couple of his neighbours. When he happened to mention that one of them, a man by the name of Walters, had recently moved down from Hamilton, a bell went off. I showed him a photo of a goon from up that way I been keeping tabs on. He recognized the face, said he saw the man leaving Walters’ house once or twice.”
“So it was Walters?”
“Wait, it gets better. Me and Bickerstaff raided Walters’ place this afternoon and turned up a case of wine, a case of beer, and a few bottles of Schwab’s whisky. We brought Walters in for questioning. He admitted the guy in the photo, the Pole, was an acquaintance of his. He said he used to lay bets on the Pole’s book in Hamilton. Walters managed to win just enough to keep him in the game but never enough to pay his debts.”
Montroy started fanning himself with his hat before continuing with his story.
“Things got interesting when a rival bookie started spreading rumours about the Pole’s books being fixed. Suddenly the Pole had more enemies than even he could handle, and so he blew. Walters figured he was off the hook. That was until the Pole darkened his door one day looking for money. Walters scraped together just enough to buy himself the kind of time that gets measured on a stopwatch, not a calendar. When the Pole came back for more, Walters got cocky and told the Pole to scram or he’d rat him out.
“The Pole just laughed. He told Walters he knew he was in deep with the other bookie and that he could fix it for him. Next thing Walters knew he was reading in the papers about some low-life found floating in Hamilton Harbour. The description matched the bookie. The Pole went to Walters’ house to brag about it and tell him that he wouldn’t hesitate to pin it on him if he needed to. Walters was indebted for life now and every week the Pole came to collect.”
Montroy noticed Corbishdale becoming a little slack-jawed in disbelief.
“After a while Walters had had enough and quietly slipped down here. It only took the Pole a few days to track him down. He made Walters give him the lay of the land and then put him to work on Schwab. The whole thing made Walters sick. Walters said when we came knocking on his door he realized the only way to get rid of this phantom for good would be to finger him and suffer any consequences.”
Montroy turned and set his gaze back on the building across the way. He and Corbishdale were watching the Pole’s apartment on Tuscarora from a position across the street on Marentette. Montroy’s plan was to follow the Pole to his target, watch him execute his raid, and then find out where he took his liquor. He finished his story, talking out the side of his mouth at Corbishdale.
“This morning we brought back Schwab to corroborate Walters’ statement, and I spent the day gathering more evidence. The Pole’s a bottom feeder, son, picking up bottles wherever he can, the hard stuff mostly — whisky, bourbon, that sort