by John Farrow
“Yeah, so?” Trudeau wanted to know as well.
“Why are you striking another Frenchman?”
“Because he’s sitting on a bench here! I don’t want no goddamned spectators! Are you a goddamned reporter?”
“I’m a priest! You watch your language.”
“You’re a priest?” the cop asked him, shocked.
“He’s a priest,” Trudeau confirmed, as though his opinion should be trusted. “A Dominican, of course, but we can forgive him for that, no?”
“You Jesuit elitist,” Father François fired back at Trudeau, and chuckled.
“Just get off this bench here!” the cop tried again, not knowing what to make of these two nutcases. Then he capitulated somewhat. “You should go home, Father. We can take care of business here tonight. Tomorrow you can visit the hospitals.”
“You should go home, not me. Don’t bother with your business. Tomorrow you can go to confession.”
“What am I supposed to confess? That I’m doing my job?”
“That you were busting Catholic heads for your English bosses!”
“What English bosses?” the cop asked. “What’s he talking about? Is he really a priest?” He seemed on the verge of striking them both again, if only to stop their crazy chatter. “He talks like a communist!”
“He’s a communist priest. They exist now,” Trudeau explained.
“Wake up, man!” Father François yelled at him. “Wake up!”
“I’m awake,” the cop answered, confused. “Are you drunk, Father?”
“Are you?”
“I’m on duty!”
“Are you drunk on duty? Ask yourself this question.”
“You can’t be a communist priest. There’s no such thing. It’s impossible!”
“Why? Because Duplessis won’t allow it?”
“The Pope won’t allow it!”
“The Pope has problems with Dominicans, though,” Trudeau cut in. “They’re such a pain in the butt, you know? At least he’s not a Sulpician.”
“At least you’re not either.”
“Or a Franciscan.”
“What are you talking about?” the cop asked. He thought they might be making fun of him.
“The divisions and subdivisions. If you’re a communist, you might be a Trotskyite, or a Marxist-Leninist, or even a Maoist. If you’re a Catholic, well, the permutations are endless.”
“What’s he talking about?” the cop asked again.
“Anyway, Officer, it’s been nice talking to you. Don’t swing that thing at me again, all right? We’re moving back.”
“I’ll crack your head open if you don’t! If I find out you’re a reporter, I’ll smash your nose!”
“If you like, I’ll point out the reporters to you,” Father François offered, which won a chuckle from his new friend.
“You’d better move back, too, Officer,” Trudeau cautioned him. “We’re in the middle of the next charge. Give up the bench—it’s not worth bleeding over.”
“You’re communists!”
“Not quite. He is. I’m merely an intellectual Jesuit Buddhist, with liberal underpinnings and a humanitarian bent. A little hedonism on the side.”
“You’re homosexuals!”
“I’m a priest! Watch what you say.”
“I’m also a lawyer,” Trudeau admitted, “but maybe I shouldn’t tempt you. I’m also a ladies’ man. But, like I said, maybe I shouldn’t tempt you.”
“Sorry, Father, but get out of here or I’ll forget that you’re a priest. I’ll bust your head! I’ll bust the lawyer’s head in half.”
“Officer,” Trudeau persisted, “look around you—you’re isolated. Get the hell out of here yourself.”
The officer did look around this time and realized that he was alone. The mob had spotted him, and the next charge met in the middle of the square around the bench he’d coveted, the officer flailing wildly at communists and homosexuals and unionists and intellectuals and reporters and lawyers and probably teachers and parents and superior officers and even hockey players who failed to score on crucial breakaways while other cops raced to his rescue and Trudeau and his new friend stepped back as the two forces clashed.
“This changes everything!” Father François yelled in Trudeau’s ear above the din. They were not alone in having a conversation, as behind each joust men on both sides argued and tried to figure out what was happening, or what should happen next, although their discussion was singular.
“We can agree on that,” Trudeau said.
“It’s the beginning of the revolution.”
“Actually, it’s the beginning of the riot. The riot is part of an ongoing social upheaval. To call it a revolution is to hijack the agenda for your own purposes. You should be ashamed of yourself, a priest.”
“I’m a Dominican. We promote new ideas, unlike Jesuit stick-in-the-muds.”
“We promote a more rigorous examination, Father.”
“So in the end you can clear your conscience for doing nothing.”
“Am I holding you back, Father? Do you want to throw a rotten egg?”
“The poor don’t have eggs to waste on policemen!”
“Pardon me?”
They were being jostled from behind and had to duck to the side against a building to avoid being pushed into the path of horses.
“Not even rotten ones. The poor don’t have eggs,” Father François repeated.
“Spare me the rhetoric, Father. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“A rich young Jesuit from Outremont.”
“And you, a cozy priest.”
“You pulled your punch there, Pierre. You meant to say fat.”
“I meant to say what I said, Father.”
“Don’t call me cozy. I’m here, aren’t I? On the front lines.”
“The front lines are fifty feet away.”
“Close enough. I don’t have the heart for battle.”
“You’re a pacifist?”
“No, I just have a weak heart.”
The two men laughed then, and the fight in front of them dispersed in a torrent of snowballs from the young boys in the rear.
Amid imposing Doric columns, visitors are guided up broad stairs into the Sun Life Building. Scaled-down columns are repeated seventeen floors higher, the overall effect one of solidity and long-term prosperity, as if success can be measured as eternal. True to form, the Sun Life Assurance Company has enjoyed a long and eventful history in the province, its influence at times approximating that of the Church. The first institution Armand Touton had chosen to defend upon deducing that there might be trouble in the streets was the Sun Life, not because he favoured the place, but because it stood out as a likely flashpoint for French rage.
He accosted the first officer he came across guarding an entrance.
“I said to keep people out of here!”
“I did, sir.”
“Crooks got in!”
“Not through my door.”
“Young man, I bought a new stove recently. Electric. Turn it on, and like magic, the rings on the burner heat up. They get so hot they go red. You can boil water so fast you can turn your kitchen into a sauna in the wintertime. If I find out somebody got through your door, I’ll make you sit on that burner.”
“My door was locked, sir, and it’s still locked. I don’t have a key. You have to go down to the middle to get in.”
Touton tested the officer’s locked door, and confided, “That’s good news for your ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
Only a few cop cars were parked up and down the block, and across the street a number of officers had gathered around a statue to the Scottish poet, Robbie Burns. Touton didn’t have a spare minute to investigate how they got to goof off amid the uproar. Across the night sky he heard the sirens of emergency vehicles, marauders roaring and the flagrant honk of car horns in support of the riot.
Smoke from fires and tear gas fumes drifted across the square.
Touto
n also berated the cop on duty at the middle door, but again received no admission of guilt. “They didn’t come in this way, sir.”
“If I ask every cop on duty, will I get the same response?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe.”
“I suppose the crooks landed by helicopter.” He intended the remark to be both rhetorical and facetious.
“Something like that,” the young patrolman said. “I heard it was something like that, anyway.”
Touton shook his head as the officer unlocked the door for him. Sometimes young cops could be just so damned stupid they took his breath away.
Downstairs, another cop was waiting to guide him up. The elevator, smooth with a comforting guttural purr, possessed an elegance the policemen rarely experienced. The walls were mahogany and the fittings a gleaming, polished brass.
“Detective Sloan upstairs?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the patrolman said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” He doubted that young cops were becoming more stupid year by year, but on this particular night he seemed to be running into the dullest minds in the department.
“He’s gone back and forth so often, it’s hard to keep track. Sir, I think he’s upstairs, but I could be wrong.”
“Back and forth between where and where?”
“Between here and the park, sir.”
Touton guessed the cop was probably intimidated by his rank and reputation, as well as by his tone, so offered nothing more than rudimentary responses.
“You mean across the street? What’s in the park?”
“The dead man, sir.”
“What dead man?”
“The one in the park, sir.”
“What’s your name, Officer?”
The lad took a deep breath and wondered what he’d done to deserve this. “Miron, sir.”
“Miron, why is there a dead man in the park?”
“I don’t know, sir. I mean, he was murdered, I know that, but I don’t know why, sir.”
The elevator had reached their floor and the two men clambered out, Touton first. “You’re telling me there’s been a murder in the park? Detective Sloan is covering both cases?” Actually, when he thought about it for a moment, given that every cop was being stretched beyond the breaking point on this night, that seemed reasonable.
“I think it’s the same case, sir.”
“What?”
“Just what I heard.”
“The burglary in here—”
“—and the murder in the park, sir. Same case.”
They’d reached the door to the league offices. “All right, Miron. I want you to stick around and take care of my shotgun. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t shoot your foot off.”
“I’ll take the shells out, sir, if that’s all right.”
“All right. Here’s the rest of the ammo. If the rioters come up in that elevator, you have my permission to reload and blast away.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man said.
Touton shook his head in dismay. Then he thought he’d better say something. “I’m kidding.”
“Oh,” Miron said. “Okay. I got you.”
Touton stepped over glass and tried not to touch the cracked door to the modest office. A crowbar was on the floor. The foyer was surprisingly small, with insufficient room to swing a cat—or a hockey player his stick. Players had to come here for their disciplinary hearings, and Rocket Richard would have been here only a day ago to plead his case. Touton stepped through to the corridor that led to the warren of adjoining offices, and Detective Sloan spotted him.
“What’s up?” Touton asked.
“This is big,” Sloan said.
“It better be,” the senior officer let him know, but he could see the excitement in Sloan’s eyes and caught it in his tone of voice.
“All right, from the top, there’s been a break-in.”
“How’d they get in? We’ve got guards on every door.”
“Through the windows,” Sloan told him. At forty-seven, he was considerably older than Touton, but having neither his war record nor his success as a cop, he had become junior to him in rank. His hair was thinning. His face was pinched, as if by adversity. His complexion was pale, as though he rarely experienced sunlight. No matter the time of night, he always had such a smooth jaw that Touton doubted he could properly grow a beard, although he could use one, as his chin was weak.
Touton pushed the tip of his hat back, its usual angle when he was indoors, especially if he was mulling something over. “Are you telling me they flew in here? Because I’m willing to partner you up with that dumb patrolman I met downstairs. Oh … let me guess. You’re the one spreading the rumour they swooped in by helicopter.”
“Give me a break, Armand. Come on. We don’t have everything yet, but it sure looks like they got up on the roof somehow, then lowered themselves down to this level by ropes. We know they broke in through the windows—that’s a fact. They committed a burglary, took what they wanted and left by the windows also, but this time a few floors down. Then they dropped themselves to the ground by ropes when our guys weren’t looking.”
“Our guys weren’t looking. Of course not. What else did they have to do tonight to keep themselves occupied … twiddle their thumbs?”
“Armand, they were guarding the doors. They weren’t looking up. Who would? They were watching the street. Coming down, the crooks concealed themselves behind the columns. It’s ingenious. They almost made a clean break.”
“Almost?”
“Let me show you this first.” He led Touton down a narrow corridor, through an office where cops were murmuring amongst themselves, then into a small antechamber that housed the vault. The heavy steel door sagged open and the wall had been blackened from a blast. Touton took a closer look.
“They blew it open?”
“Dynamite. That crude.”
“Who heard this? And don’t say ‘nobody.’”
He already knew what the man would answer. The building had been emptied for security reasons. The walls were as thick as fortress ramparts. In none of the rooms he had just walked through had there been any windows, and there were none in this one.
“Nobody,” Sloan said.
“What did they get?” Touton asked him.
Rather than answer straight away, Sloan took a deep breath.
“What?” Touton tried to imagine what the dilemma could be. “The Rocket’s stick? A Howie Morenz puck? The Stanley Cup? What?”
“The Cartier Dagger.”
“What’s that?”
“You should know,” Sloan told him. “Not me.”
“Why should I know?”
“Because you’re French. Campbell’s coming over. He can tell you more about it.”
“Clarence Campbell? The mob will kill him if he’s spotted.”
“I told him that. He wanted to come anyway. So I sent a patrol car.”
“That’s good.” Touton shook his head. “If it was me I’d’ve put a bag over his head.”
“If it was me I’d just shoot him,” Sloan said. “But that’s another story.”
“Good point. I hope you sent a couple of guys we can trust.”
Both men smiled. Sloan showed him the smashed glass display case in which an invaluable antique knife resided most days. The case was a couple of feet long, and, like the panelling in the elevator, made of a bright mahogany with polished brass trim. The broken glass was thick and scattered in pieces on the floor.
“Usually, during the day, the case is kept in Campbell’s office. On display. Even then, it’s locked, and secured to the desk it’s on, and the desk weighs a ton.”
Touton was thinking about something else as he took to examining the heavy door blown partially off its hinges. “Usually, there’d be people up here, right? If not in this office, on the floor. If not on the floor, then in the building. Night shift workers. Cleaners. Lawyers preparing a case. Peo
ple working overtime on a big project. That sort of thing.”
“That’s right.”
“So if this is some sort of big-time heist—”
“Which it is.”
“—then the bad guys took advantage of the riot to break in …”
“I believe that,” Sloan agreed.
“ … then how did they know there’d be a riot?”
“I believe that, too,” Sloan contested, one step ahead of him.
“You believe what?” Sloan was making no sense.
“Somebody might have started the riot in order to steal the Cartier Dagger.”
This was news. Touton had assumed that, in the coming weeks, numerous commentators would be taking a stab at explaining the riot. The frustration of hockey fans, the fury of the French who felt victimized yet again by the English, the social upheaval of a nation wrestling with its postwar restraints, the wrath of the poor—the rationale would be discussed and debated, yet no one was likely to suggest that the entire matter had been a ploy to blow the doors off a vault.
Recovering, Touton said, “Tell me about the knife.”
“An old relic owned by Sun Life. It’s worth millions. For once, ‘priceless’ is a word that fits. Originally, it belonged to Jacques Cartier himself—some Indian gave it to him. It’s on loan to Campbell for his work at Nuremberg, but just on loan, because, like I said, it’s worth millions—or more. He can keep it here as long as he’s NHL president.”
“What’s in it for him?”
“He gets to look at it whenever he wants, I guess. It’s a handsome knife.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen it.”
“When? Where?” Touton drilled him.
“Tonight. Across the street in the park. The dagger is stuck in the heart of a murder victim. Up to the hilt, right through the breastplate. It’s still there right now.”
Touton looked at Sloan. His own excitement was rising, and he wanted to suppress it. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said slowly.
“Come across with me. See for yourself.”
“Lead the way.” Touton pulled his hat lower, indicating that he was headed outside, but also that he meant business.
Before they could manage the foray, Clarence Campbell got off the elevator. He was still in the company of the three women with whom he had attended the game, one of whom had received more than her share of tomato splatter. Apparently, the three were not about to leave his side anytime soon, nor would they consent to being left alone by themselves. They were spinsters, and he was a bachelor in need of their care in this, his darkest hour.