The Judas Plot -- Part Nine

Would you trade a soul for a pound of flesh?

Jun 20, 2026

Image by Midjourney. Prompt and design by Kevin M. Coleman.

New to The Judas Plot? Get your bearings here.

Midtown. Later that afternoon.

Rules govern society, both the polite and the profane. Rules say You see this line? Don’t cross it. The long con of our lives steams on the tracks laid down by rules that don’t always make sense, but most people don’t care. They just obey. That’s always been a tough call for me.

I was standing across the street from the Labour Exchange on Simcoe and Colborne, my thumb worrying the release on the stiletto in my coat pocket. A line of a hundred grimy, dispirited transients waited in the cold for their turn to swallow their pride and ask for help. Many were veterans from the Great War, and still wore their faded medals on frayed lapels. Jimmy Caruso was somewhere in that line, and from a doorway on the other side of Colborne Street, I puffed on a Sweet Caporal as I debated my next move.

The Exchange was headquartered in the old Mercantile Building, a grim federal edifice with a beaver and wheat motif carved in stone over the main entrance. A green copper plaque next to the doors announced the government’s occupancy. Dominion of Canada. A Mari Usque Ad Mare. Ripped straight from Psalm 72: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” For those once-proud men groveling for relief, for charity, it might as well have read: “Shame on you.”

The line hadn’t moved for about ten minutes, and the men shuffled in place, shivering in the damp October wind.

My fingers curled around the stiletto’s ebony handle and my stomach tightened. The rules were simple: Break the faith, expect to be punished. It would be easy to cross Colborne and haul Jimmy’s ass out of the line, but then what? Gut him on the sidewalk? In broad daylight? In front of a hundred witnesses? After everything I had learned from Van Ness? The rules weren’t worth a damn if I couldn’t find him.

As I scanned the queue for his familiar face, I thought about home. I had abandoned hope of ever returning to the Bradford Arms. Garrett had the building under surveillance, and even if Chief Greaves ended the dragnet today, the landlord had probably emptied my place by now because the sheep wouldn’t tolerate a wolf living in their midst. My God damned library was probably in a wagon on its way to a secondhand shop. That offense alone deserved at least a couple pokes. I scowled and flicked the cigarette’s nub into the street and the coal exploded into orange sparks.

Jimmy was homeless now, too. He had tried to do right by Gladys, but washing dishes and shining shoes didn’t pave the road out of The Foundry. Honest work didn’t pay enough to buy an honest life these days, and the man Jimmy wanted to be crawled back into the skin of the man he’d tried to leave behind. It left him vulnerable to mopes like me.

Garrett popped into my head. Had he run out of time and released Gladys? Interrogating her had been a long shot to begin with, and an upright cop like him wouldn’t feel good about sweating a pregnant woman beyond twenty-four hours.

The wind shifted and carried the sour tang of unwashed wool from the queue outside the Exchange. I lit another cigarette to mask the smell and pushed Gladys and the wreckage of her life to the back of my mind.

I crossed Colborne and peered around a massive stone pillar through the Exchange’s big bay window.

The line snaked back and forth on itself in front of a row of brass wickets. Behind the cages were government clerks in modest suits, and on the other side were the men seeking relief. How many of them would get swept off to the Prime Minister’s work relief camps, just to get the garbage off the streets? It was a depressing view. And still no Jimmy.

Stationed in the corners of the room were men in light gray uniforms with Aldridge Security & Protection embroidered on the breast pocket. Something about them nagged at me.

A commotion erupted at the back of the office. A manager in a dark suit and gold bow tie appeared at the window of a closed Employees Only door. His face was angry and his fingers jabbed at someone still partially hidden behind the door.

The door opened and my stomach dropped. It was Insp. Garrett, red-faced but restrained and trying to get away. The government man grabbed Garrett by the arm and the inspector jerked away.

A closer look at the Aldridge men told me the rest story. Their eyes didn’t have the typical bored sheen of private security, for whom nothing exciting ever happened. These men were alert and actively scanning the room. Garrett had salted the room with constables, in disguise as private security so as not to tip off his quarry. I grinned to myself. Garrett was pulling out all the stops.

The constable closest to Garrett glanced my way and our eyes locked. My entire body tensed. His eyes squinted with suspicion and he tapped Garrett’s elbow. I jerked back from the window and scurried down the dim, narrow breezeway between the Labour Exchange and the lunch counter next door as fast as my battered body would allow.

“STOP!”

Like hell. I sped up, splashing through puddles, ignoring the pain flaring across back and shoulders, and curled around the corner of the building. Ahead of me was a packed earth square encircled by the ugly rear facades of the buildings on the block. Narrow alleys exited the square. One of them off the corner might lead to Simcoe.

Running footsteps got louder behind me. No time to choose.

Beside me, a stairwell led to the basement of the Labour Exchange. It was shielded by concrete walls four feet tall. I gripped my leather sap and crouched behind the wall on the third step down despite the pain that shot up my lower back.

Pounding feet passed the stairwell and the constable hesitated a few feet ahead as he tried to decide which exit I might have taken out of the square. I wasted no time with the sap, striking the sweet spot on the base of his skull just hard enough to put his lights out. He was heavy and I nearly dropped him as I struggled to get him down the basement stairwell. I was binding his wrists behind his back with his own cuffs when a grizzled voice turned my blood ice-cold.

“Hold it right there, Burback.”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t move.

“Inspector Garrett,” I said, working hard to keep my voice level. “How are you this fine October day?”

“Enough bullshit. Let me see your hands.” I raised them high.

“Lace them behind your head,” he said. I did as told.

“Get on your knees,” he said. It was a struggle, but I obeyed.

“Stay where you are and don’t move,” Garrett said. “If you sneeze, I’m going to put a slug in your back. Understand?”

“Look, you got me, Inspector. At last. This bravado doesn’t become you.”

Garrett said nothing as he descended the steps. Dry leaves crunched under his feet. His breathing was rough, laboured.

“Where are your other friends?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he snapped. “Remove those cuffs from Constable Jenkins.”

Slowly, I lowered my hands and picked up the key where I’d dropped it, then uncuffed Jenkins.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Hands behind your back,” he said. “Cuff yourself.”

“Okay. I’m doing what you asked,” I said, slowly bringing my arms around behind my back. “I’m not resisting.”

As my wrists came together, I let the cuffs slip from my fingertips. They dropped between my ankles. Garrett swore.

“Pick them up,” he ordered.

Very slowly, my back and shoulders creaking like old stairs, I lowered myself and reached back between my ankles with my fingers. I could hear my heartbeat jacking up faster.

“I can’t reach them,” I said. “I took a tumble off the side of Liberty General getting away from you and now my back is all fucked up.”

“I don’t give a shit about your back. Reach. You’ve almost got them.”

I tried a second time but got no closer.

“I can’t,” I said, holding my arms behind my back. “Help me out, Inspector.”

“Pain in my ass,” he muttered. “You should have stayed in bed. Don’t you fucking move. Jenkins!”

Garrett kicked the constable’s foot. He stirred, lifted his head and peered at us.

“Sir?”

“Get up.”

Jenkins roused himself slowly. Behind me, Garrett’s coat rustled as he retrieved his cuffs.

“Here,” he said, reaching past me. Jenkins took the cuffs. “Put those on him. And be careful.”

My senses were as crisp as the wind curling in the stairwell, the way they are when I enter a house I’m about to burgle. Grit crunched under Jenkin’s shoes as he circled behind.

“Arms together,” Jenkins said.

His shadow loomed and I put one leg under me and drove upward, my shoulders catching him in the midsection. Jenkins grunted and stumbled and I kept driving upward, until we were both falling backward into Garrett. I landed on top of Jenkins and rolled off, a spike of adrenaline muting the pain that would be screaming at me later. I seized him by the shirt and drove my forehead into his nose. There was a wet crunch and he slid off Garrett and back down the steps to the basement landing.

Garrett’s head lolled from side to side and his eyes rolled independently of each other. I stripped him of his service revolver, a sturdy .38, and broke open the cylinder. I shook out the cartridges and pocketed them.

“You’re…under arrest, Burback,” Garrett mumbled. He struggled to his feet and lunged at me. I sidestepped and he bounced off the wall and backwards into my arms. I could smell Bay Rum aftershave and mint Life Savers off him.

“You’re under…arrest.”

“Easy, big fella,” I said, guiding him back to the steps. “Have a seat. Here’s your gun.” I dropped the neutered revolver in his lap.

“Do me a favour,” I said. “When you get back to Russell Street, go see the doctor about your head. You’ve probably got a concussion. Sorry about that.”

Garrett grabbed for me as I climbed the steps, but his grip failed. I adjusted my overcoat and crossed the square heading toward Simcoe alley.

I followed the crooked lane past the rubbish bins until the exit came into view. Simcoe Street was blocked by the unemployment line, and I pushed through the haze of tobacco smoke and body odour. An old vet snarled at me to get to the back of the line. A curious young man in the crowd looked my way. Recognition instantly turned to fear, and he started shoving his way out of the line.

“Caruso!” I snapped.

That only made him shove harder. He broke free but I was already on him, holding him by the scruff of his neck.

“Let go!” he said, squirming like a worm on a hook.

“Stop fucking around and come with me.”

“Not going anywhere with you!” he said. “Help!”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m saving your God damned life.”

Jimmy took a swipe at me. I saw it coming, caught his arm, and twisted it behind his back then frog-marched him across the street. He thrashed about and tried to break my foot with the heel of his shoe so I shoved him, hard. His arms pinwheeled and his legs tried to catch up to his body’s momentum until he tripped on the curb in front of a pair of businessmen walking abreast. He slammed face first into the red brick building then slid sideways onto the sidewalk.

“See here! What’s going on?” one of them asked, his white walrus moustache bristling with annoyance.

I hauled Jimmy back up to his feet.

“Truant officer,” I growled. “Go about your business.”

Jimmy started coming to. “Lemme go...” he said, words slurred by the blood dribbling from his mouth and nose.

“Shut up,” I snarled.

A pair of hotel linen delivery men exited a dim service lane just ahead, maneuvering a heavy, wheeled hamper between the two of them. I steered him that way.

“Through there,” I said, and shoved him into the narrow gap between a Model AA van and the red brick building.

“It’s too tight,” he whined.

“Move!”

We made it past the van into the open alley. I glanced behind me, but there was no sign a tail.

I turned back and walked straight into Jimmy’s fist. My head snapped back and my knees wobbled. My nose went numb and filled up with blood, the overflow running down the back of my throat. I caught the wall before the lights went out completely.

Jimmy had a good lead and was pulling away from me, until a hobo climbed over the lip of a hotel refuse bin and fell in his path. Jimmy skidded to avoid stomping the man, but ended up tripping over him and tumbling into a heap on the damp cobbles. He scrambled for traction, but I caught him.

He tried an off-balanced jab as I hauled him upright. I stopped short, dipped left, and swept his legs out from under him as he stepped past me. As he slewed sideways, I grabbed the back of his coat and his belt in both hands and flung him into the wall. His breath exploded out of his chest and he went down hard. I jammed my knee into the small of his back, snapped open my stiletto, and pressed the needle point under his ear.

“Are you going to fucking behave?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he blurted. “Don’t hurt me!”

A line of blood dripped out of my nose and down my lip. I swallowed, tasted iron in my mouth, and spat against the bricks.

“I’m starting to regret not letting you walk into Garrett’s trap,” I growled.

“What?! Garrett?”

“He had the same thought as me and had men waiting for your dumb ass in the Labour Exchange.”

Jimmy tried to shake me off, but I held him down.

“Let me go!”

“To take your chances on your own and get sent up to Farfield? What would your father think?”

Jimmy struggled a bit longer and finally gave up.

“Are you going to behave?” I asked.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

I removed my knee, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and stood him up against the wall. I pressed the needle point against the tender flesh under his jaw and brought my face inches from his.

“Idiot. I could have stuck you between the ribs and left you for dead in the back of that delivery van.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

I let him go and snapped the stiletto shut. He swallowed hard, rubbed his neck where the blade’s tooth nipped him.

“Been asking myself that same question for the last ten minutes,” I said. I turned and started walking. “Let’s go.”

On the opposite end of the alley, a tall sandstone arch emptied onto Colborne almost a block further up from the Labour Exchange. I hugged the wall and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk then looked back toward the Labour Exchange. No cops that I could see, yet.

“Come on,” I said, merging with the other foot traffic heading north. Jimmy tagged along behind like a puppy.

We kept a brisk pace, but not a guilty pace. My eyes swept the curb on the other side of the street for an easy opportunity to steal a car as the wind carried the distant wail of sirens. My guts tightened, and I picked up the pace.

“There,” I said, quickly pointing at a tan and brown Oldsmobile F-32 Six idling on the opposite curb. Two men in fine wool overcoats were talking on the sidewalk. “Follow my lead.”

At the first gap in traffic, I crossed Colborne diagonally, Jimmy keeping pace just behind me. I twisted the Olds’ chrome door handle. Unlocked. I slid behind the wheel and Jimmy climbed in beside me.

A man on the sidewalk turned sharply and raised his voice in alarm as I dropped the Olds into gear. Jimmy started to turn.

“Don’t look at those men,” I said, pulling smoothly into traffic and cutting off a black Cadillac. Tires screeched and a horn blared.

“We might have to ditch this pretty bird,” I said as I took the next right. “She stands out too much. Keep an eye out for cops.”

We drove in silence, taking lefts and rights at random, until I answered the question on both our minds.

“Part of me wishes I’d cut you back there in that alley. You deserve as much for breaking the faith.”

Jimmy’s eyes stayed on me a long time, then slid away to the traffic ahead, then to the sideview mirror. We drove about three blocks before I broke the silence.

“I ever tell you about Quiet Mickey Quinlan?” I asked.

“No.”

We turned a corner and I threaded the Olds around a produce van unloading its wares and took the next corner.

“Quiet Mickey Quinlan. Partnered with Eamon Crowley for almost three years. Quinlan did the rolling. Crowley did the details. They were solid partners, until it ended in ‘29.”

“How?”

“Quinlan got greedy or scared, depending who tells it, and sold out a job they’d planned to a third party before Crowley could collect his cut.”

“What happened?”

“The job went down in March ’29. He hot rolled a delivery truck loaded with sable, chinchilla, ermine, mink. The usual suspects. It was parked on the curb, right outside Melbourne’s Furs. After his new friends disposed of the coats and paid Quinlan off, he went to ground. He’d broken the faith, and he knew what it meant. So, he laid low to let the whole thing cool off. Cops couldn’t find hide nor hair of him for weeks.”

“Did they ever find him?”

“Yeah, they found him,” I said. “Three months later there was a commotion under the Twelfth Street pier. The seagulls were fighting a war with the crows over something good they’d found to eat.”

“Quinlan?”

I nodded. “The lake’s cold water had preserved him, and the six-inch trough in his belly.”

“The crows were…eating him?”

“Yeah. Pecked out his eyes. They were starting on his guts when the cops drove them off.”

Jimmy shuddered.

“Was Quinlan your friend?” he asked.

“Hell no,” I said.

After a long silence, I said, “We work among beasts, Jimmy. We don’t have to be them.”

We ditched the Olds in favour of a navy-blue Ford Model B and continued through town.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Were you really going to the relief camp to work?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He laughed darkly. “Scared. Scared straight. I made a lot of damned money with you. Gladys thought I had gone honest, and the way she looked at me when I brought home that crib for our baby. I felt like a man. But it was hollow underneath, and I had to keep filling it up. Before I knew it, the money was gone. That reward from the Dunbars was my break even. My reset.”

My ear picked up the sincerity behind his voice, but he was a hustler and a con, and I wondered if I was being played again.

“You left Gladys in the lurch,” I said.

He laid his arm along the windowsill. “She’ll be all right. She’s got her parents to go home to, until I can get back on my feet. I made her a promise.”

He reached across the seat and held out a folded piece of paper. I took it.

“I was gonna mail it from wherever I ended up,” he said.

I unfolded the letter and spread it out over the steering wheel, read it as I drove. When I got to the end, I refolded it and handed it back. I shifted in the seat and kept my eyes on the road.

“What? Is it too much?”

The letter left me feeling as if I’d been listening through the door as a man begged his wife for forgiveness.

“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind. It’s perfect just like that.”

I pulled the Ford over at the next phone booth. I had one more thing to take care of before I ended things with Jimmy, but I had to make arrangements. When I got back into the Ford, Jimmy was reading the letter. He kept reading and rereading it as I drove, occasionally wiping his face.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled the car to a stop and drew my Colt. Jimmy looked up through the windshield. It was almost four o’clock and dusk was settling over Forge. Out of habit, I pulled the slide on the Colt to chamber a round. Jimmy’s face blanched.

I climbed out of the car. “Let’s go,” I said.

I scanned the neighbourhood from Royal Bakery to the chain link fence that surrounded Whitlock Station. Jimmy was still in the car. I checked my watch.

“I said, get out.”

He folded the letter, shook his head. I followed his eyes down to the gun.

“Idiot. This isn’t for you. Garrett might still be out here, and I don’t like surprises. Now, come on. We don’t have a lot of time.”

We crawled through the break in the fence and headed away from the station, following an overgrown concrete path to the freight yard where a CN train was picking up empty cars.

The enormous engine rumbled, steam hissing somewhere beneath it. The forged steel connecting rods chuffed and shuddered as the engine poured power to wheels almost as tall as me. The locomotive groaned like a weary animal and crept backward slowly. Off in the distance, from the direction of a brakeman’s tiny yellow lantern, came the deafening crash of steel cars coupling together. The train shuddered under the collision.

“Walt, where are we going?” Jimmy asked again.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

The yellow lantern had grown larger. The brakeman raised it and called out. I called back.

I turned to Jimmy. “Just shut up and let me do the talking.”

A short round man came into view, camouflaged against the lowering night by the dark overalls and the grime on his face.

“Was starting to think you were a no show,” he said, extending his hand. I clasped it and we shook. “This the package?”

“It is,” I said. “Jimmy Caruso, meet Hank. He’ll be your steward for your trip.”

Hank sputtered. “Like hell. We got no supper service, kid. Don’t even got seats.”

Jimmy gazed up at the freight car.

“Where am I going?” he asked.

“The hell out of Forge,” Hank said, with an edge of impatience. “Walt, you said this kid was desperate.”

“He is,” I said. I turned to Jimmy. “This train is going to The Docks to pick up cargo then it will pull north to Long Lac. Hank has guaranteed safe passage.” I counted off a few bills from the knot in my pocket. “You’ll hang around Long Lac until the Northland train rolls in. If you’re serious about work, there’s a relief camp organizing in Kapuskasing. Buy a ticket and get on the train.”

Hank unlatched the door of the car, rolled it open with a clang and held out his hand. I started peeling off more bills.

“This is for you,” I said to Hank. “This is for the engineer. This is for the railway cops, if they turn up.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Consider it a bonus.”

Hank folded the bills and they disappeared into a deep pocket in his filthy overalls. With a flourish, he waved Jimmy aboard the empty car.

“All aboard,” he said.

Hank climbed the short ladder to the car’s flat bed and waited for Jimmy. Jimmy gazed inside the car and nodded to himself.

“I was sure you were going to kill me for what I did,” he said.

“Part of me wanted to. The law of the jungle demanded it. But I’m no murderer, Jimmy.”

I walked past him, cinders crunching under my feet.

“Wait!”

I turned around. Jimmy held out his letter to Gladys. I shook my head.

“Mail it from Kapuskasing,” I said.

“You can get it to her faster.” He held it out. “Please. She deserves to know what happened. To me.”

Reluctantly, I took it from him and jammed it deep in my inside pocket. Jimmy turned to the freight car, took Hank’s hand, and clambered up and out of view.

“God dammit,” I said.

Kevin Coleman writes crime fiction from the cold edges of Canada. He'll tell you firsthand that crows never give up their secrets.

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Disclaimer
This article is an original work by Kevin M. Coleman. All rights are reserved. No part of this article may be copied, stored, or reproduced in any form — including but not limited to use in training artificial intelligence or machine learning systems — without the author’s express written permission.