Strange Fugitive Read online

  The street was quiet, no lights in the houses. It was nearly two o’clock and a milk wagon turning the corner swayed, the bottles rattling loudly. The horse jogged up the street, hoofs beating steadily on the pavement. “I’m glad I’m not going home,” Harry thought, watching the milk wagon go up the street.

  They turned another corner, and the neighbourhood was poor, now mainly ramshackle old houses, fifteen blocks west of the centre of the city. Along the street the city-hall tower and the big clock stuck up over the roofs of houses and small stores downtown. They walked two blocks without seeing anybody, but when they were crossing a street they saw a heavily loaded truck six doors up from the corner. They walked on about fifty feet, then Harry said: “That truck looked kinda funny there.”

  “Booze, I guess,” Jimmie said.

  “Come on back and let’s take a look.”

  “What’s the use?”

  “They may be unloading.”

  “Sure, they probably are, but what of it?”

  “Come on, let’s watch them.”

  They turned, walking on grass close to the wall of the corner house, and at the end of the wall they looked up the street.

  “There’s a guy standing on the sidewalk near the engine,” Harry said.

  “I can’t see him.”

  “No, the truck is between us and the sidewalk but I saw his head move twice.”

  A man came out of the alleyway. Harry watched the man intently. He lifted a case off the truck and went back along the alleyway. Harry leaned against the wall. He didn’t speak to Jimmie for about five minutes, watching for the man to come out of the alleyway. The man worked steadily. They watched him take six cases along the alleyway. He rested for the seventh case, leaning against the truck, talking to the fellow near the engine.

  “A pretty big bootlegger,” Jimmie said.

  “He takes his time. That truck’s worth a lot I bet.”

  He took hold of Jimmie by the arm. “It’s worth a lot, I bet,” he muttered. His legs were getting cramped and he straightened up. “Lord, Lord,” he whispered. He moistened his lips, turned and looked at Jimmie, but could see only the side of his head.

  “What’s up?” Jimmie said.

  “I’d like to take the load. I’d like to take the whole damned load.”

  “Take the load where?”

  “Sell it, some to Angelina, anywhere.”

  He didn’t look at Jimmie. He heard him breathing but he was watching the man getting his arms on a case. “It’s a hell of a chance to take,” Jimmie was whispering. Accustomed to the darkness now, Harry could see one of the men distinctly as he walked toward the alleyway. He had on a dark sweater. He had big shoulders. His neck was thick.

  “It’s a chance,” he said.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “We’ve got to cross the road without the guy at the front of the truck seeing us, and then we got to bluff them, see Jimmie, we got to bluff them.”

  “All right.”

  “Come on then.”

  “Go on.”

  Pressing against the wall they went around the front of the house. The man came out of the alleyway again and stood on the sidewalk, cutting a plug of tobacco. He straightened up, putting the plug and the knife in his pocket, and rubbed his hands. He shot a stream of tobacco juice out on the road. Then he took another case from the truck, said something to the other fellow and went back along the alleyway.

  They were directly opposite the truck across the street. “You’re sure you can drive it, Jimmie?”

  “Sure I can.”

  “When we hear the guy coming down the alleyway, we’ll duck and try and get on this side of the truck before they see us.”

  They crossed the street, not moving fast but treading carefully, their heads bobbing up and down as they moved on the balls of their feet. They made it. They got across the street without making a noise. They leaned against the truck. On the other side of the truck a man scraped his feet, then thumped his heel on the pavement. Along the alley the other man moved coming out to the street. Jimmie moved toward the back of the truck. Harry took two paces toward the engine. Looking across the driver’s seat he could see the back of the man’s head. He straightened up and said quietly but distinctly: “Put up your hands, both of you.” He heard Jimmie at the back of the truck say: “Put up your hands.” The head turned quickly, trying to locate the voice, and backing away from the truck. “Put them up,” Harry said harshly. The hands went up slowly. Harry took three steps around the engine. The man saw him coming and his hands sank slightly, then shot up quickly.

  “Turn around,” Jimmie said. Both men turned slowly, their hands up. “Get into the car, Jimmie, I’ll watch these guys,” Harry said. He heard Jimmie getting into the car, fumbling with the controls. He kept his eyes on the backs of the two men. The head of one was swaying. The engine ran smoothly. “Keep them up,” Harry said, getting into the car, one foot on the mud-guard. The truck jerked forward. One of the men ducked toward the alleyway. The other turned and fired three shots. A light came on in the front room of the house. The truck was going fast.

  Harry got on the seat beside Jimmie. His heart was beating very rapidly. He put his hand on the spot, rubbing it uneasily. Jimmie was undisturbed. As they turned the first corner another shot was fired at them.

  “I can’t get the lights on,” Jimmie said.

  “Lemme see.”

  “Right here.”

  Harry fumbled with his fingers. They turned another corner. Jimmie bent down and groping with one hand turned on the lights.

  “Now for Angelina’s, eh?” he said.

  “Let her go.”

  They drove downtown, avoiding main streets. They went down University Avenue and behind the Armories and along to Angelina’s corner. A police station was only a block away but they felt safe. Angelina was very friendly with the police, who didn’t bother her. No lights were in the building.

  Jimmie stayed in the truck while Harry rapped on the door. Angelo came to the door and they talked. Then Angelina came down and at first shook her head, shrugging her shoulders, but Harry coaxed her till she said she might take a little, and when he pointed out that they truck was half unloaded, she said she might as well take it all at that price.

  Angelo helped unload the truck. They carried the cases into the backyard. Harry offered to help carry them down the cellar, but Angelo said he could look after that himself. They went into the house and Angelina, a dressing down wrapped around her, sat down at the little table in the hall and wrote a check. She grinned cheerfully at Harry. Angelo grinned.

  Outside Jimmie said: “What are we going to do with the truck?”

  “Can’t we keep it?”

  “Like hell we can. We’d better park it some place and beat it.”

  “Any place up north then.”

  They parked the truck on a side street north of Bloor and walked back to a car-stop. They waited twenty minutes for a streetcar and Harry got sleepy and leaned against the post, his eyes closed. The night had been long. He wanted to lie down. He wasn’t going home. He wanted to lie down and be away from home.

  “I’m going down to Anna’s,” he said when the car came.

  “Suit yourself, it’s none of my business,” Jimmie said.

  On the car they were both sleepy and didn’t talk much. Harry promised to meet Jimmie at eleven o’clock the next morning and Jimmie got off the car. Harry went further east to Sherbourne Street and walked down to Anna’s apartment. There was a light in the hall of the apartment house. He pushed the buzzer that had Anna’s name over it and went upstairs and rapped gently on the door. She opened the door and said, “Oh my heavens!” and he went in. She was surprised and excited and glad to see him.

  He made love to her, then she slept, but he couldn’t sleep. He had never been in trouble with the law. He didn’t even like knowing cops. Trouble could come from cops and the law only if you were poor and a failure. The satisfaction he was nursing made
him feel he was going in the right direction. A man who was feeling so exultant and expectant couldn’t have a bad conscience. If you did a thing, and after it had been done you had this feeling of elation, it meant the thing you had done had been right and good for you. He could tell he felt great because already little things that had been troubling him, things he couldn’t name that had been making him feel lonely, were getting lost in his new sense of ease and satisfaction. He fell asleep. He had a happy dream. He was in the woods making his way painfully through some thick tangled underbrush to a sunlit clearing just ahead. It was a gold-lit clearing. People were gathering there, waiting for him with presents. They were preparing a table for him. Then he heard an angry voice and he looked back. His own father was there; he was in his shirt-sleeves; he had been in his chair reading the newspaper. The quiet, docile, white-haired, blue-eyed little man whose head came up to his son’s shoulder was shouting with fierce authority, “Come back here, Harry. Come back, do you hear?”

  It was a bad dream. He woke up suddenly, his heart pounding. He didn’t know where he was, or when it was, and he thought his father or mother must be very sick and waiting to hear from him. Minutes passed before he could convince himself that a lot of time had passed and his father and mother were dead. It was astonishing that such a dream could shake him. It was a joke. It was news to him that he had ever had any real respect for his old man. His mother used to say, “Harry needs a strong hand now. You talk to him,” but the old man, the serene blue eyes on him, would say quietly. “He doesn’t want to hear anything from me. You’re the one he listens to,” and go back to reading his newspaper. And the old man had been right; how could you respect a clever-talking man who accepted the fact that he was never to make more than fifty a week and was content with his little house and his garden and all the sketching he did and the daubing in oils? A man who didn’t even know he was such a little guy wasn’t entitled to any real respect.

  It was not yet dawn. A gray light was widening on the ceiling. Feeling lonely and restless, he got up quietly and went to the window. The street lights were still lit. While he stood there the sky changed, the street lights went out. The daylight brought him a new morbid excitement. It was a feeling of not knowing what was going to happen next. He liked this feeling. He had always wanted to have it. While he could keep this feeling he was sure he would never hear anyone crying out, “Come back here, Harry.”

  PART THREE

  1

  All winter Harry and Jimmie were developing into good bootleggers, living together in two rooms and a bath in a rooming house overlooking the Normal School grounds, opposite the Young Women’s Christian Association. There was a window in one room affording a view across the street into two or three Y.W.C.A. rooms. In the evenings, with nothing better to do, they sat at the window hoping to attract the girls’ attention. Business developed slowly and Jimmie was unsuccessful when he tried to get a job in the Customs Office, so at night they sat down at a table in the room and carefully studied the Act, provisions for exporting and for local consumption of liquor. The elaborate and difficult wording of the Act bothered Harry, but Jimmie, in an offhand way, made difficult points quite simple: the breweries were allowed to take orders for foreign shipments and consignees could provide trucks and take delivery at the brewery so long as it was intended for foreign shipment. The night they developed the idea and decided Jimmie should go to Niagara Falls and phone in an order, they slapped each other on the back, shaking hands warmly. It was a time to get drunk, and they went around the corner to the English Cooking Café and made a date with two waitresses for an hour later. They had a modest party in the room, but one of the waitresses, a tall Swedish girl, got sick early on beer and they put her to bed and while she was sleeping, Jimmie, sitting in an easy chair, his feet hooked up on the dresser, insisted on reading in a loud whisper various speeches from Shakespeare’s comedies.

  By the time they took their first deliveries from the brewery they had become confident of each other’s ability. Sometimes Jimmie’s enthusiasm made Harry uneasily aware that Jimmie knew too much for him, not in Stan Farrel’s pigeon-hole way, but in a manner so simple and direct it enabled him to dismiss things casually, leaving an impression of absolute sincerity. At first it bothered Harry that Jimmie was mentally swifter, his better education giving him an advantage, but as days passed, he learned that Jimmie was too lazy to carry out his splendid ideas, and lying awake in bed one night, staring out of the window at the moon over the roofs of the school, he felt that Jimmie depended upon him to carry out even the simplest plans. It made him happy to realize it. Lying awake in bed he was eager for more strength and influence and money. He felt surer of himself, more confident. He hew he would never be bothered again by an uneasy thought of Jimmie. Though Jimmie ordered most of the liquor, Harry actually called at the brewery with the truck. They never wasted time storing liquor but drove directly to speakeasies and unloaded at once. Angelina, a good customer because they sold cheaply to her, had made possible the development of a trade supplying eight small bootleggers in different sections of the city. The business was on a solid basis and Harry was anxious to go home and explain to Vera that he was becoming successful, the business developing, his influence increasing, until he would soon have his own power and his own importance. He was eager to talk to her but knew he would not go home and it became a foolish dream of power. It was as if she were an essential audience for him and there was no use trying to interest any one else in the same way.

  He talked about Vera to Jimmie, who was sympathetic without being sentimental. He reminded Harry that he had left Vera deliberately, and now was fairly happy, going along his own way, and besides it wasn’t likely Vera would be glad to hear he was running liquor. Such a thought hadn’t occurred to Harry, who had taken it for granted she was eager to be with him no matter what he was doing so long as he was successful. But he couldn’t argue about it. He said, “Is that so,” and started a conversation about ridiculous laws. A long time ago they had agreed they were not breaking laws in the old way like plain crooks, and all the silly laws on earth couldn’t make them crooks. Jimmie wanted the point to be distinctly understood, the night they had walked for hours along the lake front talking till midnight, and he spoke profoundly about theories of law, and individual freedom, problems uninteresting to Harry, but encouraging him to go ahead with the business. He imagined himself talking like that to Vera but knew he could not explain the matter so clearly. He sent money to her every week, enough for rent and her own living.

  For a few weeks he enjoyed living alone, sleeping alone. There were no difficulties after the day’s work, but he became conscious of a new responsibility, a new kind of awareness, forcing him to be alert even when in a restaurant, or walking along the street. He developed a habit of glancing slyly at people who passed him. A head turned. He walked on, half looking over his shoulder.

  In two months they had enough money to dress expensively and went together to a haberdasher’s and bought clothes; three suits apiece, ties, shirts of English make. They were buying ties and Harry watched Jimmie, who was uncertain whether he liked a particular colour. Holding a tie of weak, indefinite colour in his hand he said, “That is about right, eh? Neat and not elaborate, eh?” It occurred to Harry that Jimmie was afraid of his own taste in colours, and he said good-naturedly, “Oh, that’s terrible, Jimmie, try this.” And while in the haberdasher’s he was a little patronizing to him. Jimmie had often taken too much for granted, and in the store Harry couldn’t resist being helpful carelessly enough to make it plain he had good taste naturally. Something that couldn’t be developed from now to doomsday.

  They left the store and walking along the street Jimmie felt obliged to defend his taste in colours. He explained patiently that there was a scientific basis for good taste. He was argumentative and talked about primary colours, colours of the spectrum. “What an awful lot of bunk to help a guy buy a tie,” Harry said, but Jimmie went on indignantly explain
ing mechanical rules used as a basis for securing harmony in colours. Harry took it quite peacefully. “I’ve got Jimmie’s weak spot,” he thought.

  The easy money from buying slowly and selling steadily encouraged them to live more elaborately. Harry took a flat in the good apartment district up on St. Clair. A decorator furnished it in splendid style. Then he bought a grand piano. He couldn’t play the piano but liked coming into the room at night and looking at it. He was lonely in the apartment. He ate all his meals downtown and merely slept there. He told Jimmie that the apartment lacked something, a kind of stability. “Get a servant, old boy, get a servant,” Jimmie suggested, adding that a Chinese cook with a valet’s talent would be okay. The idea appealed to Harry. “That’s a beautiful idea,” he said. He thought about it for three days, then advertised for the Chinaman. He got one all right, but for two weeks was not comfortable with him in the apartment.

  He had many parties. They were able to get some fine-looking women but usually picked up little tarts and had a merry time for a few hours. After one of these parties lasting all night he thought remorsefully of Vera and made up his mind to send her a definite sum of money each week.

  He was unhappy when he thought too much of her. He hadn’t definitely decided never to see her again but thought vaguely of living with her later on when he had made more money. He was growing tired of picking up women and got into the habit of making love to Anna constantly. She was satisfying and no bother at all. He promised Anna they would live together in the apartment as soon as he could buy a swell car.

  He didn’t buy a car for a month because it was necessary to move slowly and avoid treading on the toes of men like O’Reilly and Al Cosantino, and two Jews, Simon Asche and Steve Weinreb, who divided the Jewish trade. O’Reilly was influential in three wards, owned a few bawdy houses and a hotel. Cosantino had most of the Italian trade, delivering from door to door, and had men out taking orders all the time. He had supplied Angelina until she dropped him for Harry.