Maiden Lane. Michael Januska
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MAN ON THE STREET
Campbell closed the Cadillac Café and started winding his way home through winter. Not enough ginger, he thought. Not enough ginger.
He frequented Ping Lee’s establishment on Riverside Drive because Ping kept late hours and let him order off-menu. Campbell had asked him what was fresh, and knowing what he liked, Ping skillfully assembled a succulent chicken and vegetable chow mein. The fried noodles were filling and the chicken juicy and tender, done just right, but there wasn’t enough ginger, and that’s what Campbell was most looking forward to: something to gently keep his insides warm while he measured the streets of downtown. Ping had frowned at Campbell’s ginger request at first. He didn’t believe it should be included in this recipe that he took great pride in preparing. But he liked Campbell; he always told him he was “okay.”
Campbell occasionally went to Ping just for information, but knew better than to call it that. Informants in the Border Cities, particularly those who worked or resided along the river, had a tendency to disappear. He told Ping that he sought his opinion, his sage advice.
The wisdom of the Orient.
Ping smiled the first time he heard Campbell use that phrase.
What’s so funny?
Campbell eventually stopped using it.
He was looking for Ping’s thoughts on Judge Gundy’s decision this morning. He had a copy of the Border Cities Star opened in front of him on the counter. “Two Chinese Get Big Fines.” It was an opium trafficking case. The fines followed a messy RCMP bust at a grocer’s on the other side of the Avenue. Ping was his usual philosophical self.
Dou yan.
What?
One of his daughters happened to be standing nearby, stacking hot, clean plates. She bridged the divide for them.
He say, you cross-eyed.
Really? What else does he say?
Not much. Not tonight.
Campbell stopped telling anyone at the department about his surveys of the city streets in his off hours. He had thought they would have appreciated it, respected his desire to know the territory as well as any constable walking a beat. Chief Thompson told him he was wasting his time and the other cops said, in not so many words, that he was cutting their grass. They also thought he was checking up on them, maybe being used by Thompson to keep tabs on them. Things didn’t used to be this tangled up, thought Campbell. Regardless, he quietly kept to his routine.
Every intersection was an open invitation to the bitter wind. Campbell pulled his overcoat collar up against the elements. It did little good. He hated doing it, but he decided to shorten tonight’s planned circuit by taking Pelissier Street up to Wyandotte, and then loop back north toward his apartment once he crossed the Avenue.
The wind whistled around the slack in the telephone wires and howled through the gaps between buildings. Any warmth Campbell might have been carrying with him was quickly dissipating; he could barely feel his nose, and his cheeks smarted like they’d had a good slapping.
A strange amber flash in the big windows along the side of Meretsky & Gitlin’s furniture store caught his eye. It was a reflection. He glanced up at a dying streetlight and that was when he noticed the snow swirling overhead. Pulling his collar up further, his bowler down lower, and plunging his gloved hands even deeper into his pockets, he continued on his chosen path.
No traffic on London Street. No streetcar wheels grinding to a stop on frozen tracks. No sputtering motors. No surprises. He shifted his eyes over toward the darkened Capitol Theatre as he crossed. It would have recently emptied. It was the last night for Heroes of the Street; he had meant to catch that one.
Probably just as well.
He continued his brisk pace. At Park Street, the businesses gave way to simple clapboard houses. They didn’t hug the sidewalk and didn’t throw much light. The snow was landing now and he was picking up the smell of wood and coal burning. He had resisted long enough; he paused at the top of Maiden Lane to light a cigar. He dug deep through his layers to find it, procured under the counter from Ping, and his Ronson. The spark, a flash, and the aroma. He was feeling better already. But only for a moment.
The crash cleaved through the night. Campbell instinctively ducked, but his curiosity made him turn just in time to see a shadow hit the pavement along with broken glass and what appeared to be windowpane. He looked up and saw a curtain billowing out of a yawning gable in the third storey of the sole dwelling on Maiden Lane. He ran over. The body was splayed out in the dusting of freshly fallen snow. Blood was pooling around the head and glass fragments glittered in the streetlight. Campbell unhitched the flashlight from his belt, picked the victim’s pockets, and found a wallet. He opened it, found some identification and then his mind kicked into gear.
Kaufman: Male, foreigner; year of birth 1867. Right cheekbone crushed from impact; cuts on his face attributable to glass; broken right arm raised over his head; cuts on his hand also from glass; left forearm tucked under his midsection; body twisted slightly — both feet pointing to the right.
A constable came running from the Avenue, not thirty yards away. He was surprised to see Campbell already on the scene. “I rang the box, sir.” Maybe his way of saying he would have been there sooner.
Campbell noticed a neon sign hanging in the ground floor window of the house. No other light came from the window. The sign looked like an eye. Below it, painted on the glass were the words Madame Zahra’s Astral Attic. A small parade of concerned citizens dressed in bathrobes, overcoats, galoshes, and other people’s hats came staggering, bleary-eyed, out of their homes along Pelissier and the Avenue, converging on the house on Maiden Lane. Campbell pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “Send up whoever from the department gets here first,” he said, before pointing his cigar at the gawkers, “and keep these people back.”
There were no fresh footprints on the front steps. The entrance was unlocked. Campbell entered. On the other side of the tiny vestibule was a longish, narrow hall. First to the right was a locked door, and just ahead on the left was a staircase, with light coming from above. He leaned against the handrail and looked up. A fixture was dangling above the second-floor landing. Campbell took to the stairs, two at a time, until they delivered him through the floor into a tiny attic apartment.
He felt as though he just passed into another world, and in some ways he had. It resembled a gypsy tearoom from a Hollywood movie. Stepping up, he first noticed the stars painted on the ceiling; then the richly patterned wallpaper; iconography and idols; fringes, tassels, incense, and candles. He was so distracted by the décor it took him a moment to notice the three people sitting around the table to his left and a fourth chair tipped onto the floor. A woman whose costume and demeanour suggested she was none other than Madame Zahra appeared calm. The other two, older, about the victim’s age, appeared agitated. The trio made eye contact with him but did not move or speak. They appeared frozen in the moment. He left them in that state while he quickly examined the window, a gaping hole that went almost from floor to ceiling. In addition to the winter gusts, it was also opened to a view of the neighbourhood rooflines and the bright, distant beacons of downtown Detroit.
Campbell considered the trajectory of the body. To have gone through the window and landed that far away, Kaufman either would have had to have a running start or have been thrown with a great deal of force — and the trio at the table looked to him like a card of featherweights. He looked down again and happened to catch the station’s REO as it turned from the Avenue onto the lane, coming to an abrupt stop about ten feet from the body. Campbell held his gaze until he saw a constable step out of the vehicle. He whistled and then went to the top of the stairs to greet him.
“Bickerstaff,” he shouted.
“Detective Campbell?”
The constable scrambled up the stairs and into the apartment. “What happened, sir?”
“I think the sidewalk killed him,” said Campbell.
“And what