River City

by John Farrow

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Order of Jacques Cartier?”

  “Can’t say that I have. A bunch of guys in funny hats, it sounds like.”

  The league president rubbed his eyes before speaking. Given all that had transpired the previous evening, Touton doubted he’d had much sleep.

  “If only that’s who they were. Check police records. They will show that I once brought the name to the attention of the authorities. I didn’t expect any serious danger to be imminent, but at the time it seemed prudent. I’m a lawyer, so naturally I try to follow the precepts of the law.”

  Touton leaned forward, interested. He had come here hoping to explore a number of avenues, but had expected only to close down a few lines of inquiry. He had not expected to discover a fresh lead.

  “Months ago, I received a letter. I’ll have to check my records to provide a more precise date.”

  “Do you still have this letter?”

  “I surrendered it to the police. To my knowledge, it’s not been returned.”

  “What did it say?”

  Mr. Campbell cleared his throat. “At the office, we receive threats on rare occasion. We don’t pay them much heed. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to take at least cautionary notice.”

  “You were threatened?”

  “Me personally? No. My office. ‘A Molotov cocktail through the window’ was how they put it. If you allow for the fact that the bottom floor has an immensely high ceiling, we’re about twelve flights up. Who can throw a Molotov that high? So I don’t think they knew where the offices were. The address on the envelope wasn’t complete. Just ‘National Hockey League, Montreal.’ In French. That’s how they addressed it, and by some fluke it arrived on our doorstep.”

  “The post office would find you. Did the letter say anything else?”

  “Something to the effect that the Order of Jacques Cartier demands the return of the supreme symbol of the Order, the venerable dagger of Jacques Cartier. Not terribly particular. It didn’t provide us with anyone to return it to, for example.”

  This, at least, was something. “They still sound like men in funny hats to me. After our officers took the report, did you hear back from the department?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nor from the Order of Jacques Cartier?”

  “Not unless I did last night.”

  Touton stood. Enough issues were churning through his head that at this point he’d rather pace. He was in no position to be confrontational. Campbell was a respected man, relied upon for his integrity, but Touton wished that he had the freedom to push him a little. The man had not owned the knife, but he would see it every day when he stepped into his office. He was aware of the object’s value. Was there no residual wish to personally possess the knife? Was there no interest in selling an object worth that much? As a relic, it either sat on his desk or slept in his vault. Millions of dollars would be considered more tempting by many. As for the Order of Jacques Cartier, the lead was interesting, but to a suspicious or inquiring mind, the mention of an “Order” struck him as convenient. As a beat cop, he had answered calls about jimmied doors and broken windows when nothing had been taken, yet a few weeks later the house would be properly burglarized. Coincidence or not, the homeowners had a police report from an earlier attempted break-in to show a skeptical insurance company that might otherwise suspect the occupants of indulging in fraud. In this instance, had there been a conspiracy—one that involved Campbell, or even one that did not—the letter from an “Order” might well have been sent in advance to divert a police investigation later on. He saw no reason to credit an obviously skilled thief with the decency to first announce his intention to commit the crime.

  Besides, he had to assume that Roger Clément had committed the crime, not some “Order.”

  “About the letter, there’s another aspect,” Mr. Campbell mentioned. His guest had turned his back to him and was examining a large painting from an earlier century of children clustered around a rather vivacious mother.

  “What would that be?” Touton asked, without facing him.

  “At the bottom of the letter—”

  Touton turned. “Yes?”

  “—they had stamped a swastika.”

  Touton’s only response was to cock his head slightly and gaze at the other man more intently, indicating his interest and a subtle demand for more.

  Mr. Campbell sipped his tea first, then put it down again. “It’s something I live with, Captain. From time to time, residual pro-fascist elements choose to disparage my work at Nuremberg. I thought I’d mention it, in case the item assists you. I read an article on you one time, so I feel secure in assuming where you stand on the matter.”

  Thrusting his hands into his pockets, Touton conferred a pensive nod. “Thank you. Yes. We both served. We’ve that in common.” He left unsaid that the military lawyer had very different war experiences than the foot soldier and POW, yet he knew that the conflict altered the course of both their lives. Both had believed in what they were doing, and both had seen and learned matters about humanity that only a war will divulge. Without making a conscious decision to do so, they subtly segregated themselves from those who had not participated—never fully trusting them, never being comfortable when conversations included the home front during the war. In an odd way, then, the experience did bind them. “Mr. Campbell, do you know Roger Clément?”

  “The name rings a bell, but I don’t believe I do.”

  “A former NHLer. Before your time.” Touton resumed his seat. “A cup of coffee with the Blackhawks, lunch with the Rangers.”

  “Then I’ve heard the name. I don’t believe I know him. Why?”

  “He was the other man killed last night, with the Cartier Dagger.”

  “Oh dear.” Mr. Campbell sighed heavily and repeated himself. “Oh dear. I don’t like the sound of this. A former hockey player? Killed with a dagger from my office? The papers will have a field day.”

  “Perhaps we won’t put it all together for them. They don’t need to hear about the murder weapon. Clément, whom I knew quite well, had a criminal record. He spent the war in an internment camp for politicos.”

  The president of the National Hockey League nodded, content that his organization might elude media scrutiny on the matter. “I hate when a player falls on hard times.”

  Touton waited to learn whether Campbell had anything to add, and, when the man remained quiet, took his leave. They shook hands at the door. Touton put on his hat, buttoned up his coat and departed the building, intent on a closer inspection of the riot’s aftermath. Most of the devastation had occurred on Ste. Catherine Street, parallel to Sherbrooke, two short blocks down. He chose to walk.

  One hour later, at police headquarters, his arrival may have been unexpected, for rarely did the famous captain of the Night Patrol show up during daylight, but no one registered even token surprise. The riot had altered the landscape, the times were volatile. Half the department was working a double shift anyway. Under the circumstances, his subsequent activity did raise a few curious eyebrows among the ranks. From Records, Touton wanted to know which officers had responded to a call months earlier at National Hockey League headquarters, and from Archives he requested a report on whatever had been determined about the Order of Jacques Cartier.

  For his part, Armand Touton was explaining nothing—not a shock either.

  He sat at his desk and placidly drank more coffee while the tumult around him rose, and fell, and rose again. Intermittently, he smiled. The day shift, uninitiated to his habits, felt intimidated, as though under indictment themselves.

  Which they were. Touton gently chastised them. On his own internal scale, the riot hadn’t been so bad. They didn’t know how mad chaos could be. They didn’t know what it meant to be on a beach in hell, and so they spoke excitedly of recent events and they related experiences at a feverish pitch.

  When Armand Touton had heard the ping of machine-gun fire
on the hull of his landing craft at Dieppe, he and the others understood that death was imminent. Only a few dared look each other in the eye, for they shared the shameful truth that they were about to die. They finished up their notes home, tucked photos of their loved ones away, said their final prayers and heard the landing gate creak down, admitting bullets. They weren’t far enough in. The first to get out dropped into water over their heads. Touton splashed down, then was pushed down deeper by the men jumping out behind him, and pushed down again by the next, the feet above him kicking him below the water. Looking up, he saw bullets penetrate the surface, like rain, with blood already pooling. He swam underwater and crawled ashore with his comrades. Within two minutes, twenty-four were dead, and the three remaining survivors had been shot. Touton bled from the wrist. He had tucked himself down behind two dead soldiers, and, with the help of another survivor, piled a third and then a fourth corpse onto their wall. Bullets never stopped snapping at the sand around them and ripping into the flesh of those who were dead. That was chaos. That was fear. Not this exuberant, charged madness in the streets.

  Rescue craft arrived after a few hours of the continuing carnage, but, in an infuriating repetition of the landing, stayed out in deeper water. He made a run for it, and was shot for the second time, high on the arm, yet he managed to swim to the craft, but there he helped the comrade ahead of him and was trampled under again. He was confused now. As though no time had passed, he was underwater again—was this a dream? nothing felt real—and when he bobbed to the surface again, the rescue craft had saved a few souls, but it had also moved on without him.

  He kept diving to avoid the bullets.

  Surfacing one time and spotting a British destroyer offshore, he chose to swim for it. Dying in the water or dying by a bullet on the beach seemed the only options. He swam three miles in the rolling waves and was making good progress. He could see rope ladders dangling over the side and other swimmers clamouring aboard. He would be safe. He would live. As he closed on the vessel, it ignited with explosives from stem to stern, and those on the ladders leaped back into the sea. Touton himself turned and swam back to shore.

  Only after the war would he learn that the explosions were a ruse, a trick to make German aircraft believe the vessel had been hit and destroyed. A good ruse. Most swimmers returned to shore because they were convinced the ship would sink, and a few swimmers stopped swimming with the hopelessness of it all, and let themselves drown.

  Touton choreographed his landing so that he’d have the protection of burned-out equipment and a litter of bodies as he crawled from the water and, exhausted, collapsed on the beach. He suffered a third bullet wound, a flesh wound to the side, but he hardly felt it. He could hardly feel anything anymore. No fight was left in him. He knew that he had participated in a great defeat. What he had left to face was either death or capture.

  That was chaos. That was excitement. And having survived all that and what came later, a gunman’s paltry bullets or the hostile rage of a gang would always fail to impress him, and certainly fail to keep him from his duty. Indeed, the one thing he could not tolerate was cowering behind cars or walls as if behind a fort of bodies, waiting for reinforcements. To hell with reinforcements. They could be an illusion or a complete waste of time. They could be an exploding ship. Instead, as a cop, he’d always attack. Attack, attack, attack. And somehow get through it, and survive.

  In a foul mood, he thought the hell with superior officers, just as he’d said the hell with generals who led their men into unrelenting slaughters. He had decided back then that, if he were permitted to enjoy a future, he’d make his own choices. He was willing to put his life on the line, repeatedly and not always wisely, but no fat tub slumped behind a desk would have the privilege of doing so on his behalf. In the future, he would lead, and decline to be led by fools.

  While he was waiting, starting on another cup, a plainclothes officer he did not know knocked on his office door and waited politely to be invited in.

  “What?” Cops often dropped by, hoping they could be taken onto his squad, but he was fussy about who worked for him. “Who’re you?”

  “Detective Fleury, sir.” The man looked intelligent. He could easily pass as an academic, perhaps an effect of the tiny, wire-rimmed glasses he wore. In an era of tough, physically imposing cops, the man’s lanky frame and pinched face struck Touton as odd. He was small. “You were asking about the Order of Jacques Cartier.”

  The captain sat back in his chair, putting an elbow on the armrest as he touched the back of his jaw with two fingers. “You should not know that,” he advised his visitor.

  “There’s a good reason why I do. If I may explain.” Oddly, the man did not hold his hands at his side, but crossed them over his chest, one folded in the other. The fingers seemed especially long and feminine.

  “Have a seat, Detective.”

  Doing so, the man demonstrated a peculiar habit of sitting on the very lip of the chair, as though he might pitch forward at any moment. The posture of his back was arrow straight, and he fastened his hands to his knees in a tight grip.

  “What squad are you in?” Touton inquired.

  Between clenched teeth, the man drew in a breath as though to suggest he was being asked a touchy question. “I’m not in any squad exactly.”

  “Which department?”

  “Policy.”

  Despite himself, for he was usually respectful of strangers, Touton released a little laugh. “What do you do in Policy?”

  “I am a real detective,” Fleury tried to assure him, but he was less confident of his bearings than a moment ago. Touton had jangled a nerve.

  “That’s your rank, but what do you investigate in Policy?”

  Fleury rocked his head from side to side, an indication that he was into many things. In the end, he conceded, “My work is administrative. I work on budgets. Assignments. The allocation of resources.”

  “That’s important work.” He tried to be serious, without fully succeeding. “Somebody has to do it, right?”

  “Somebody does. Isn’t it better if a detective does that sort of work?”

  “As opposed to—”

  “A civilian. An accountant, let’s say. I’m trained in accountancy—”

  “Are you now?”

  “I didn’t graduate—the war was on. I had my mother to look after—”

  Touton laughed aloud. “Your mother! Ha.”

  “Sir!” Fleury protested. “I am a detective. Maybe I don’t do the same work as you do—”

  “Apparently not.”

  “—but that is my rank.” With earnest conviction, he shook his head as he spoke. “I was brought into the department to be an administrator. To represent the interests of policemen on the beat and in the squads. I believe it’s important work.”

  “Sorry, Fleury. I’m sure it’s important. But a detective who never gets to investigate anything, not ever … I’ve never met one before.”

  “Nobody wants to talk to me … until he wants his pension benefits explained.”

  “Pension benefits?” Actually, he was interested in the subject.

  “Then I’m in big demand. But that’s not all. Last summer, for instance, when you wanted two more detectives on your squad—”

  “Yes?” He remembered that request, and had been expecting to raise holy hell if the issue had been decided against him.

  “I’m the one who argued—successfully—on your behalf. Other squads wanted more detectives. They didn’t get them, did they? That was not an easy fight. But I fought. And won. You got both your detectives while other squads got none.”

  Suddenly, Touton could see the virtue of a detective in the Policy branch. He could also see the virtue of being friendly with a man who understood budgets and could explain pension plans. “Thank you,” he said, and he meant it.

  “You’re welcome.”

  The captain scraped his chair across the floor an inch or two and reconfigured his body language. He sli
pped one leg over the other, set for a conversation. “So. You were going to tell me why you know my business.”

  Although it was only by an inch, Fleury moved his posterior back in his seat. “I know nothing of your business, sir. I can assure you of that. But I left my name on the file, asking that anyone interested in the file contact me. The clerk called me to let me know of your inquiry.”

  “What file?”

  “The Order of Jacques Cartier. I know something about it.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Sir? Well … everything and nothing, if you take my meaning.”

  “I don’t.”

  “More than anyone else on the outside.”

  “Really.” Touton stuck a finger in his ear. “I bet you don’t get out much, do you?”

  “Ah … no, sir. Not much.”

  “If you’re a real detective, you’ll have a drink with me. I’m not on duty, so it’s no skin off my nose, but you, sir, you’ll be contravening the code of the Policy branch. You’ll probably cause a scandal. A superior might … I don’t know … frown. That would be devastating. What about it? Are you a real detective? Is that hair on your chest or bird shit? Will you have a drink with me?”

  Fleury surprised him. He seemed nonplussed. “I enjoy my beer,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind one. Anyway, it’s my day off.”

  “Your day off?” Touton was thoroughly flummoxed by the guy. “Then what are you doing here?”

  Standing, the diminutive detective shrugged. “The riot. All detectives have been called in for extra duty. I presumed that that meant me, too.”

  “Oh yeah,” Touton stated as he grabbed his hat and coat, “we’ll need to work out the budget for the riot, that’s for sure.”

  “Actually,” Fleury agreed, “we will.”

  Entering an out-of-the-way establishment on St. Antoine Street, the two men settled into hardy wooden chairs. Montreal taverns served only beer and refused admission to women. As a consequence, workingmen felt free to open their shirts down to their underwear to expel the heat from factories, and talk boisterously, routinely gushing in expletives. Crooks used the tavern to hatch their schemes, the politicos their strikes, and the workingman could address whatever worried him to sympathetic ears. In and out of season, everyone talked hockey.