by John Farrow
‘Who were the main combatants?’ Cinq-Mars inquired.
‘Abigail for the English. You talked to her, right? You know her? French side, Marie-Philomène. She used to be Flo’s enemy. Maybe now she’s looking for a new one. It looks like the fight broke out along language lines.’
‘Who else from our group?’
‘Temple jumped in quick. Probably to save Abi. She walloped a couple of ladies good. Jodi, she was scrapping away, that girl. I got to hand it to her. My respect. She fights above her weight class. Rozlynn was in the mix, too, but more like she was pulling people off her friends. She helped me out when I got in a jam. I will remember that, you know. The rest, mostly cheerleaders.’
‘What started it?’
‘We’ll find out. All ladies cooperate in the hole.’
‘Should I wonder why?’
‘Don’t.’
‘I thought you were a Christian lady.’
‘That does not stop me doing the job I do.’
Cinq-Mars had his eye on a young inmate – who looked no older than fourteen although that was impossible – moving among the inmates gathered on the French side of the battle line. She kept her eyes down, looking for something, then stooped to retrieve an item off the ground. The girl – Cinq-Mars felt comfortable thinking of that one as a girl – passed by a bleeding woman and surreptitiously slipped the item into her hand. Cinq-Mars judged the older woman, who had a hardened look even without the blood, to be a principal battler.
‘That one,’ he asked Dabrezil, ‘bleeding out of one ear and her nose, is she Marie-Philomène?’
‘That’s who she be.’
The very young one moved to the edge of the inmates and guards – no one said boo to her – and idly slipped along the prison wall, shadow-like, over to the English side. An impossible transition, really. Somehow, she crossed from one side to the other without incident and without being noticed by anyone on the ground. Cinq-Mars was puzzled at first, then corrected himself. She had not not been noticed, for that truly was impossible. She had been ignored. Which was different. And that had been deliberate.
‘Who’s she?’
Once Officer Dabrezil figured out whom he meant, she said, ‘Courtney. One of ours. One of yours.’
‘The one who stabbed her best friend to death.’
‘Her, yeah.’
‘Don’t send Marie-Philomène to solitary right away. For now, skip the infirmary also. I’ll clear it with the warden. Send her straight to me. And listen, be careful with her. Don’t let her ditch anything. Nab her by surprise, then search her thoroughly. Bring me what you find.’
‘What will I find?’
‘When you do, we’ll both know.’
Dabrezil consented. She required an official order, and yet proceeded to do his bidding in anticipation of it coming through. Cinq-Mars went across to interrupt the conference between the warden and her people.
ii
Request approved, although the warden tacked on a stipulation. She required a representative in the room. Given that Marie-Philomène was not party to his murder investigation, the demand was deemed appropriate.
The infirmary visit would wait, yet Marie-Philomène was patched up on the fly. Her wounds cleaned and bandaged, she was given a cold compress to hold against her welts and a small towel to sop up blood. A split lip. A severe cut on her ear, probably caused by teeth. Her wounds did not amount to much, but she looked a sorry mess. Cinq-Mars couldn’t imagine that Abigail had been responsible for that much carnage. Temple jumping into the breach was the more likely culprit.
They were both French but didn’t speak as she came into the room, nor after she sat down and shot him a glance of casual contempt. Cinq-Mars, arms folded across his chest, stared at her as if, oddly, he wasn’t seeing her. Once, the prisoner made a sudden gesture with her hands, as if to jump him, hoping to make him flinch. Cinq-Mars didn’t budge. After that, she looked away, offering a full dose of her disinterest. To no avail. Finally, she shouted, ‘Quoi!’ What!
The policeman still did not respond. He sat up only when a guard knocked and entered, pulled back the seat beside his, sat, and passed him a plain brown envelope. Cinq-Mars peered inside. Then tilted it upside down and let a thin silvery object slide out.
A nail file.
Marie-Philomène shrugged. No big deal to her. Except that she put her elbows on the table and leaned forward, ready to joust.
‘Why is she inside?’ Cinq-Mars asked the guard who was representing the warden.
Marie-Philomène answered first. ‘I burned a guy alive. A long time ago. If you want me to apologize you’re wasting your fucking time. I’m so reformed now, it’s unbelievable. I burned nobody alive since I got here. You can release me now. The worst I’ll do out in the real world is go piss on that dead man’s grave. Maybe that’ll help put out the fire in the hell where he lives. See? I don’t hurt nobody.’
Cinq-Mars caught everything she said but her delivery was so rapid-fire it took a moment to interpret the spiel. Her French he understood, yet the speed was unprecedented, all her sentences sounding like a single syllable.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, speaking ten times more slowly than his normal speed as though to offset her mercurial rate, a three-toed sloth to her cheetah, ‘is this what you were fighting over or what you were fighting with?’ He moved the nail file an inch forward. ‘Or’ – he paused as if out of breath – ‘or both?’
‘Who knows?’ she asked him back.
‘The next time you ask me a question, it’s an extra week – a whole extra week – in solitary.’
The threat meant something. Her eyes shifted over to the guard by his side to check if this outsider possessed that kind of authority. The guard played her part, staring back at the inmate without blinking.
‘Maybe things started that way, could be,’ Marie-Philomène conceded.
‘Whatever the warden gives you for the fight,’ Cinq-Mars let her know, ‘I’ll cut a day off it for you. Do you see how this works? Your part is to tell me who was filing her nails in public. No big deal. So, who was filing her nails?’
The inmate’s eyes wandered between the two of them, as though trying to anticipate where this line of inquiry might go, or why it mattered. A major brawl in the yard, yet she was the only person taken aside so far, and the subject of conversation was about nothing more than a nail file.
‘I was,’ Marie-Philomène admitted.
‘You were. To be clear, if we find puncture holes in an inmate, you’ll be the one to charge for the stabbing?’
‘Didn’t say that. I was filing my nails. Abigail attacked me. Said it was hers. What do I know? I found it. Soon as she attacked me, it’s gone. Then I found it again after the fight.’
‘Who’s Courtney to you?’ Cinq-Mars asked.
She shrugged. ‘A cute chick. One of the Anglos. Why?’
‘She lives in an English dorm. She walked on the French side after the fight. She found the nail file on the ground, then passed it to you. Then she wandered back to the English side with impunity.’
‘With what?’
‘People let her do all that.’
‘Maybe everybody knows what I think.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I think she’s cute.’
‘I see.’
‘Good that you’re not too blind.’
‘Not why I called you in,’ Cinq-Mars said, throwing her attitude out the window, if they had a window.
‘For the fight, no?’
‘I don’t care about the fight. Not interested.’
‘Then why? You think I’m cute?’
‘Think I do?’
She was caught in her sass. She retreated. ‘Doubt it.’
‘Who came to see you today?’
‘See me?’ Marie-Philomène stalled.
‘You had a visitor.’
She didn’t want to say although it was obvious that she understood the question.
Cinq-Mars helped her
out. ‘It’s not something to confirm or deny. It’s on the record. I’ve already seen your name on the list of prisoners who had visitors. I know who came to see you, and that’s why you’re here now. You met with a biker named Paul Lagarde. A man who’s done time himself.’
‘So?’ the woman asked.
A good question. Private conversations were none of his business. Still, he had forbidden all questions.
‘I’ve let you get away with several questions already. I’ve been generous. I’ve been kind. I can still impose an extra week or two for insubordination. Or, I can let that go if you become more cooperative. This point forward. Tell me, do we blame the prison fight on you, Marie-Philomène, or on Monsieur Lagarde?’
‘What? That’s crazy. Abigail started the fight. Blame her.’
‘You were filing your nails, no?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘What prisoner, in her right mind, would take out a nail file in the yard, an item that could land a prisoner in solitary if found on her person, and then, in full public view, proceed to file her nails? Bad enough under any circumstances. You must really have meant to provoke someone. If the nail file didn’t belong to you, but belonged to someone you were trying to provoke, what did you think would happen?’
‘You can’t prove that.’
‘I have no interest in proving anything. I’m only interested in why you started the fight by provoking Abigail. How much of a hand in this do I attribute to Paul Lagarde? I’ll ask him, of course. I’ll be talking to him shortly.’
She didn’t like the sound of that, he could tell. She tried to conceal her reaction.
‘Abigail started the fight. Snarky bitch – nobody likes her. Word is, she did Flo. The day she’s roadkill, I bet you anything, buzzards will yell at her to fuck off. They’ll watch her rot in a ditch, not even go in for a nibble. Go talk to her, if you want. I got nothing to say.’
‘You weren’t friends with Flo?’
‘Who was?’
‘Then why do you care?’
‘I don’t.’
‘I see. Thanks, Marie-Philomène. You’ve been helpful.’
‘Shove it, copper. Want I show you where?’
The guard purposefully cleared her throat and said, ‘Respect.’
Marie-Philomène clammed up then. Airtight.
iii
Late afternoon. The wind was picking up. Swirls of dust gyrated crazily around the parking lot. The World’s Loudest Harley roared in and Cinq-Mars cupped both ears. He sat on the porch like the monkey who could hear no evil until the motor was switched off.
He smelled French fries even before Paul Lagarde pulled a bag from his rear saddle. Cinq-Mars discerned a hot dog scent as well. As the biker passed him on his way to his room, he tucked his feet in, said, ‘After you eat, come see me.’
The biker stood still. ‘You got a warrant, flic?’
‘No, but I have some decent whisky.’
‘Even better. See you soon.’
Cinq-Mars had been eating well, but he could put a stop to that and renew bad habits. The wafting scent of the French fries was fiercely tempting.
When Lagarde returned they drank out of water glasses the motel supplied wrapped in a film of rip-away plastic. The whisky offset the lack of ambience or decorum. Rush hour; traffic was constant. The porch the preferred place to be, not for the unsightly view of the road, but to be free of the stuffy rooms.
‘Good shit,’ the biker said of the whisky. He held his glass up to admire the color. Asked, ‘Something on your mind, flic?’
‘Who is Marie-Philomène to you?’
Lagarde thought through the question, which was unexpected and required consideration before a reply was offered. Cinq-Mars took his silence to mean that his answer would be complicated. The biker resorted to the whisky first, swishing it around like a mouthwash before he swallowed.
‘She could be my sister.’
‘Why not lay out all your fibs at once? Get them out of the way, then start over.’
‘She could be my moll, but she ain’t that interesting.’
‘You can do better than that.’
‘Never met a woman with a meaner streak. She’s all right though. I like her. You? What’s your interest? Whatever it is, she didn’t do it. She’s in jail.’
‘That I know.’
‘Why waste your time?’
‘Why visit her? What does that do for you? How is that not a waste of your precious time? Not even your moll, you say?’
The biker was quiet again, wishing he grasped the dimensions and ramifications of their conversation.
‘What’s your interest?’ Paul Lagarde asked again.
‘Big fight at Joliette Pen today.’
‘Was there? Marie-Philomène was involved? Any dead? She survive?’
‘Interesting, you’re more interested in a body count than the well-being of your friend. If she is a friend.’
‘All right. I’ll put her first. How is she?’
‘A little the worse for wear. Nothing serious.’
‘Good. She can handle herself. Any dead?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not much of a fight. What’s your interest?’
‘Anything happens to Abigail on the inside, I put my shield in a drawer.’
That brought another silence to the conversation. Cinq-Mars appreciated the consideration. Respectful, not to have denials or feigned ignorance to contend with. Paul Lagarde might be a lout but he was a mature lout who possessed a brain.
‘The circumstances won’t interest me,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘Not too much, anyway. I won’t ask anyone to bring me up to speed. I’ll put away my shield. We’ll pick this up right where we leave it off tonight, only I won’t be restrained by the law. Or, given that I’m a peaceful man at heart, I’ll work within the law to make absolutely certain that the consequences for you will be unpleasant. Either way, I’m game.’
‘You’ll choose the weapons for our duel. You’re saying that.’
‘Exactly that. Yes. Good way to put it.’
The biker held up the last drops in his glass, then downed them. ‘Laphroaig,’ he said. ‘Peaty. I could develop a taste.’
‘Beer can put a belly on a man. Whisky keeps you thin.’
‘That don’t bother me none. Thanks for the drink.’
‘You’re welcome. Whisky, I find, keeps the mind clear. It can elevate a man’s thinking, in the right circumstances, of course.’
‘What’s your interest, Cinq-Mars? I’d like to hear.’
‘The girl stays safe,’ he said. He knew that girl may not be the right word for him to use, but it suggested a familiarity that in this case might help indicate, and solidify, a protective barrier that could prove necessary.
The man put his glass down on the porch floor and stood, which required a good push with his arms. He tapped his nose, the sniffer he’d been proud of a day ago. ‘It’s not the money with you. I’d get it if it was that. It’s not the sex. No possibility for years. This jail don’t do conjugal. I know. I’ve asked. Leaves me only one thing. You’re a dedicated whack-job, Cinq-Mars. Like they say you are. One of those.’
Cinq-Mars smiled. He was pouring a second glass for himself without offering another to his guest. ‘Once again,’ he said, ‘I hear a reference to your nose. We both know you looked me up. That’s how you know what you know. I looked you up, too.’
The biker tugged his beard, a form of tacit agreement. ‘Be seeing you, I suppose.’
‘That’s not a threat, I suppose.’
‘Let the future decide. It always does.’
‘The girl stays safe,’ Cinq-Mars repeated.
‘Heard you the first time, bro,’ Paul Lagarde said.
‘Worth repeating. Now, before you go, there’s one more thing,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘Don’t break my balls, all right? You are who you are, you’re carrying a shield, but I got my limits with you. That will always be true.’
‘This is
an easy one. Where’d you get those French fries?’
The biker happily gave him detailed directions and a five-star recommendation.
JODI & COURTNEY
i
Émile Cinq-Mars called in Jodi and Courtney to be interviewed together. They were reported to be inseparable; he wanted to see how that played out, how they connected. If it unnerved one or the other to be treated as part of a pair, rather than individually, that might also suit his purposes.
From the outset Jodi proved mildly antagonistic, ready to snap back, while Courtney came across as fearful and timid. Each shot glances at the policeman then over to her pal. The detective surmised that Courtney looked to her friend for necessary support, while Jodi checked to see that her best friend was keeping herself together.
‘Interesting day,’ Cinq-Mars remarked.
‘Oh yeah. Breaks up the monotony, say that,’ Jodi pointed out, a comment that caused nervous giggles to sputter through her pal. ‘How come you’re talking to us anyhow? I mean together, not separate?’
‘My prerogative, don’t you think?’
‘What makes us so special? Or don’t we count like everybody else?’
‘Jodi, if it’s all right with you,’ Cinq-Mars let her know, ‘I’ll ask the questions. For example, tell me how you did in the fight? Win, lose, break a nose? You look bruised.’
A purpling cheekbone, a puffy lip. Her nose had been bloodied but was fine now.
‘This ain’t nothing. I did all right.’
‘Better than all right. I heard you kicked ass.’
Jodi was not expecting that. Unaccustomed to praise, she was unsure how to respond.
‘Took my lumps, too,’ she murmured.
‘Courtney, what about you? Brawling or egging others on?’
Jodi answered for her. ‘Come on, she’s like the smallest person in Lady Jail. Except for a couple of Chinese squirts. What do you think?’
‘You’re not much bigger.’
‘I’m physical, man. I’m like an athlete. Maybe I’ll be a boxer when I grow up.’
Courtney giggled again.
Cinq-Mars kept his gaze on her until she stopped. At least he understood the humor this time, as Jodi might come across as a too-skinny fashion model before anyone could picture her as a boxer. ‘What’s your perspective on the brawl, Courtney. The two of you, closely knit pals, they say, you do everything together. Big fight in the barn and Jodi’s caught in the middle of it, whaling away on somebody. What did you do?’