The Man Who Killed by Fraser Nixon

Bob.
    â€œIf anyone asks tell them you’re training for the Olympiad,” Jack said.
    â€œYeah, the hundred yard bum’s rush,” I said.
    Bob gave me a dirty look.
    â€œGo on home, Bob, and ring me in the morning,” said Jack. “Cut through the grounds here and no one’ll see you.”
    The pair shook hands with a solemn formality. I was propped up against the tree trunk now and nodded. While Bob hurried away Jack lit a cigaret and jangled the case full of coins.
    â€œHow’re you feeling?” he asked.
    â€œBetter.”
    I extended a feeble hand to cadge a drag. Jack looked around.
    â€œDo you miss this place?”
    â€œI wasn’t cut out for the healing arts.”
    â€œI’ll say. A degree’s not worth a damn these days anyhow. Regard this august acreage. Fancies itself a shining beacon. Damn spread’s a charnel house just like everywhere else, an Indian graveyard. Look at McGill himself, that Scotch bastard. You won’t find the story on the Founder’s Elm of how he made his gelt and endowed this pile. You know what it was?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBlack ivory. That’s why I don’t give a tinker’s for the bootlegging. What’s that compared to blackbirding across the Middle Passage? A joke. Nowhere near to. It doesn’t matter, and that’s the secret of our bloody Dominion: money buys respectability. Simple. Whole country’s a monument to robber barons. All you have to do is found a library or endow a charity for strays. Yesterday’s blackhearted thieves are today’s grand old men. Just you watch: the Bronfmans and the Gursky boys will be held up as paragons of rectitude once Prohibition’s over. Money’s clean the more you have. That’s just what I’m after. An honorary doctorate and a dean’s dinner. Brandy enough to float you downriver. You wait and see. Where’re you staying?”
    â€œI’m between hotels at the moment,” I said.
    â€œCome on, then. I’ll whistle you up a cot at my place.”
    We travelled along deserted streets, the city sawing logs. No traffic or noise. Jack had rooms at the Mount Royal Hotel.
    â€œIsn’t this a mite conspicuous?” I asked as we ghosted down its stately corridors.
    â€œNo. It’s the same thing. Money buys discretion. I tip the house dick an extra sawbuck and it’s as though I was never here. It’ll be like that tonight at that knocking shop. The madam’ll write us off and the girls will be told to forget. They’re probably already with another group of upstanding citizens. Clergymen, say. What would your venerable father be saying about we two now, I wonder?”
    â€œThere aren’t many passages in the Scriptures dealing with being turfed from a whorehouse,” I said.
    â€œOn the seventh day, no less.”
    In our youth together Jack and I’d been abjured from turning a hand of a Sunday. It meant no baseball, no newspapers, not even a ride on a buggy or bicycle. Such were the joys of living in the household of a Presbyterian minister. The town had been entirely of my father’s temper, with Lord’s Day and blue laws that near enough shut Vancouver down ’til start of business Monday morning.
    â€œAch, lad, I’ll not have ye eyeing strumpets at the kinema,” said Jack, in a fair approximation of the Pater’s voice.
    From a bottle on his dresser he poured me drink. I swallowed a combination of whiskey and thick salt.
    â€œWhat is this?”
    â€œMongoose blood.”
    â€œYou jest.”
    â€œNot at all.”
    He sat on the bed across from me. Inevitably it’d been Jack who’d rebelled and challenged Jehovah. He vanished after lights out one Saturday evening and was not to be seen with the amah and myself in our pew for Sunday service. Instead Jack took his schooling on Skid Road amongst the loggers, Indians, and badmashes.
    â€œThinking on