River City

by John Farrow

  “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  “What else don’t you know?”

  Now that was a complicated question. A good one. He was thinking that she could have been a cop. “Do you have a chauffeur, Madame?”

  “You think I’m too old to drive.” She seemed ready to spit.

  “I just wondered if—”

  “You think I’m too incompetent to drive.”

  “—if someone besides yourself had access to your car.”

  “Jim does.”

  Touton gave her a look, inviting her to continue.

  “That’s right. I have an English driver. But I call him Jim. Not James. Pretty good, don’t you think? An old French dame like me with an English driver. Turns the world on its ear, don’t you think?”

  “I think you’re very capable of turning the world on its ear.”

  She enjoyed that. She had a good laugh, although her voice was frail and the way her body quaked frightened the policeman, who feared she might lose her balance. If he didn’t catch her, she could tumble down a hundred and one steps. She continued to laugh, and Touton kept an eye on her, ready to break her fall.

  “Has the car been in any accidents? Has it suffered damage over the last couple of months?”

  “You think I’m a hit-and-run driver? I’ll hit and run you! Listen, one tiny dent and I’ll wring Jim’s neck. I’ll call him James for that. That’s his name, after all. It’s on his licence.”

  “Is James around?”

  “James?”

  “Jim.”

  She thought that over, and her complexion turned paler. “Oh no, no. Jim’s dead. Who did you say you were again?”

  “Ma’am, your chauffeur is dead?”

  “Thoroughly. Poor lad. He was only seventy-three. Seventy-four in August, if he’d made it.”

  “And your Cadillac?”

  “It’s five or six. Sits in the garage. It hasn’t moved since last fall, since Jim passed on. I’m too old to drive, and besides that, I can’t reach the pedals. I suppose I’ll have to sell, but it seems a bother. Do you have a good job, young man?”

  “I’m a policeman.”

  “You were saying. What is it you wanted, dear?”

  Cautiously, he took his leave. The walk down was as precarious as the climb up, and more strenuous on his thighs. Gazing back skyward, he saw that the lady was gazing down upon him from a window. Perched like an eagle in her nest, she waved, and he moved on.

  Perhaps, he regretted, he should have asked about the Order of Jacques Cartier. She was rich enough to belong, and daffy enough to have talked about it, but he wasn’t going to climb those stairs again, not on his wounded knees.

  As the process went along, he discovered that most times when he was denied prompt access to a vehicle, he had latched onto a bad guy.

  “So your name is Marcello Gaspriani, is that right?”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no. What do you want with my car?” The man was short and almost fully bald, although he paid considerable attention to the wisps of hair that remained, tacking them into place with Brylcreem. He wore a suit and tie, and his neck bulged from a collar at least a size tight. The two men stood indoors in a parking garage, with Touton standing between him and his vehicle. Perspiration had formed at the Caddy owner’s temples. From time to time he mopped his brow with a handkerchief, and they’d only gotten started.

  “I asked my question first, sir.”

  “What do you guys want with my car?” He yelled. He was a yeller.

  “We’re checking a few things out.” Two uniforms were examining opposite sides of the vehicle, which was pristine, with polished chrome hubcaps and gleaming side accents. The white car’s upholstery was a bright red leather.

  “Tell your fookin’ guys to take their fookin’ grubby hands off my Cadillac right this fookin’ minute, and I mean right now.”

  “We need to check whether it’s been painted recently.”

  “It’s never been painted. Hey! Don’t chip my paint job! That’s original!”

  “It’s never been black?”

  “Are you insane? Look at me. Do I look like a man who drives a black car? I won’t drive no fookin’ hearse. I only drive white. Hey! Tell your fookin’ guys—”

  “Easy, Mr. Gaspriani.” Touton planted his big mitt on the shorter man to restrain him. A uniform signalled across that they had their confirmation. This was not a suspect car. “We’re going now.”

  “Yeah, you’re going? Wipe off your dirty pawprints first, before you go. I’ll get a rag for that.”

  “Don’t bother. We won’t be wiping off any prints.”

  “No? You got your own nerve, did you know that?”

  “That makes two of us, then. Because you have yours, Mr. Gaspriani. Here you are, driving a big white Cadillac, owning a tiny ice cream parlour on 16th Avenue. Does that make sense to you? We’ll have to watch over you from now on. Keep an eye out. See what else you got going on.”

  He raised a threatening finger. “Nobody’s informed you properly. I own that part of town, me. I’ll have my people talk to your superiors.”

  “Do that, Mr. Gaspriani. Maybe they’ll have lunch.”

  “It’s Gasprianini. Gasprianini, you asshole.”

  “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it. When we send you away, we’ll be sure to do the paperwork properly. The press though … you can never count on those guys. For the workingman they got no respect. They’ll probably get it wrong.”

  Two problems were working against Touton: time and bureaucracy. At least half the body shops in town were crooked for half their business, and another quarter were crooked for all their business. Somebody wanting a tail light fixed or even a quick paint job could have that done without much fuss, and long before a policeman had inspected the vehicle. As well, visiting these people was daytime work, and aside from being captain of the Night Patrol and well liked by his handpicked team, Touton was exceptionally unpopular with other captains and district commanders. In their eyes, he was a goddamned choirboy, a reformer who wanted to remove their legitimate right to tax the crooks for their sins, and if that weren’t bad enough he also wanted to take away their right to enjoy their own sins in the gambling dens and whorehouses of an open city. For him, cooperation with other departments on a daytime investigation would not come easily.

  Making matters worse, Homicide justifiably claimed jurisdiction over the crimes, and didn’t appreciate him meddling in their progress. They were certainly not prepared to share information. Then again, he wasn’t prepared to divulge a smidgen of news either. As the police director had stated, he would have to do this pretty much on his own, and he’d have to keep everything under wraps.

  Which made things almost impossible.

  An advantage he did have was the zeal of Detective Gaston Fleury, the accountant from Policy. The gaunt man visited him one night while he was at his desk dispensing orders, although Touton was planning to put himself on the streets once that job was done.

  “What’s up?” Touton asked. The visitor wore a grin on his face as if he’d swallowed not only the canary but a tropical rainforest.

  “You forgot something,” he said.

  “What’d I forget?” Detectives loved catching him on a detail.

  “Government vehicles.”

  “I didn’t forget.”

  Fleury’s face fell. “You didn’t check them,” he protested. “They’re off the list.”

  “First of all, if I did check them, they’d still be off the list. I don’t want the wrong people to know I checked government vehicles. They can’t appear on any list. But it’s true, I didn’t check them out. That’s because I couldn’t find a way to do it without the wrong people noticing. If the Order of Jacques Cartier has all these upper-level mucky-mucks as members who are in government, I can’t afford to tip them off that I’m looking into their affairs. Keep that in mind, Gaston.”

  Fleury nodded to indicate that he would bear his counsel. He was secretly
pleased that the captain had called him by his first name. He volunteered, “I know a way to check city cars without arousing suspicion.”

  “You’ve thought about this.” Touton sat back, twirling a pencil in his fingers.

  The accountant shrugged, to deflect credit. “I happened to be going by one day, that’s all.”

  “By what?”

  “The municipal garage. Where the limos get washed up and waxed. I was tempted, I got to tell you, to see if I could have my own car polished up. But I figured that would be some kind of graft.”

  “That would be some kind of graft. A garage?”

  “Municipal. We could find out who works there, maybe create a retainer for someone, pay a guy to check every tail light, see which ones have been damaged or repaired in the past, then check them out. Find out who was driving them when.”

  This was actually proper police procedure, something he should have figured out on his own. Touton was impressed. “Only one thing wrong with that scenario. But I like it, don’t misunderstand me.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “No retainer. A retainer means a paper trail. Any money that passes hands has to be under the table. You’re an accountant. Figure that one out without landing in jail. The other thing that’s all wrong with your plan is your use of the word ‘we.’”

  Fleury stood up. “I’ll see to it personally,” he said.

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  Five weeks later, he was back again, looking grim.

  “What’s the matter?” Touton inquired. The guy looked as though both his parents had died, and perhaps his dog.

  “I made a mistake.”

  “That happens.” He didn’t tell him that he expected as much. Fleury was not, after all, a properly trained policeman. “What did you do wrong?”

  “I made arrangements with this guy who washes cars.”

  “That’s what you were supposed to do,” Touton recalled.

  “I got a list of twenty-nine vehicles with possible rear-end repair jobs.”

  “Twenty-nine? Do limo drivers brake too quickly around here?”

  “Not exactly.” Fleury sighed, then straightened up, flexing his shoulders back, as though to face the music. “I was paying the guy per car. For every suspect limo, he got another fifteen bucks.”

  “Oh, Gaston.” Putting a hand to his forehead he closed his eyes.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I finally started to get suspicious, but, I know, I was slow to catch on. Anyhow, I went down there yesterday and looked at the cars for myself, to see if they really did have damage.”

  “And?”

  “The guy I hired? I saw him take a baseball bat to a tail light, then he drove the car into the garage for a wash.”

  “So they’re all tainted. They’re all spoiled.” Apologies weren’t useful at that point. Fleury merely rose and was leaving the office. Touton called him back. “You were looking at city cars, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. So if you come up with an idea on how to look at provincial and federal cars—if you find some better method—then we can try that, too.”

  “All right. I will.”

  “And Gaston,” Armand Touton said as the man tried to leave again.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You realize that this incident places you under suspicion.”

  “Sir?”

  “If the killer’s car had been a city car, you just found the way to scuttle that evidence. That places you under suspicion. It’s not personal. I’m just letting you know. You might be the director’s man in Policy, but if you’re going to do street work for me you have to prove yourself, day in, day out. I’m putting a black mark beside your name. It’s only a question mark. But I want you to know it’s there.”

  He was enjoying a little sport with the fellow, but Fleury didn’t seem to catch on. Touton figured if this man was going to work with him, he’d have to develop his internal toughness.

  “I’ll make it up to you, sir.”

  “Government cars. Provincial. Federal. Find a way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Touton figured there’d be no way he could do that, but at least the guy was out of his hair for another week or two.

  He didn’t know how the homicide squad was doing with the deaths of Roger Clément and the coroner, but he did know that his own side investigation had stalled terribly. Throughout the country, and internationally, he’d posted a description of the missing knife—which, not surprisingly, had not turned up. That the knife had been stolen for its symbolic power rather than for its retail value remained a credible theory and an angle he wanted to explore. How could he make inroads into an upper strata of society where members of the Order of Jacques Cartier might dwell? He had no experience in that realm. He came from the poor districts, had been a beat cop among the poor, and most of his working hours were spent among cops and criminals, all of whom had emerged from the same tough streets. Even the people he could trust, the mayor and the police director, did not come from money, for they were hard-nosed lawyers from the middle classes, perceived as being such fanatical reformers by the rich that they were deeply distrusted. How could he find a way into that mysterious upper echelon?

  At a meeting with the mayor and the police director in the director’s office, he asked that very question. From time to time, the three of them would do this—conduct a meeting in Pax Plante’s office to remind other cops just who held sway in the new era of reform. Being invited in for a few minutes tabbed an officer as someone who enjoyed the support of the new administration, while any senior cop who was never invited into a meeting with the mayor was considered to be under suspicion. The method kept crooked officers nervous, and good cops trying harder to demonstrate their worthiness. The meetings also proved to the department that a power in the city greater than the police now existed, that the good old days when cops ruled were finished.

  Armand Touton explained his dilemma, and Mayor Jean Drapeau and his good friend Pacifique Plante tossed a few names back and forth. Problems surfaced around each person they mentioned, and on rare occasion, when they did not have a specific difficulty with someone, they were also not enthusiastic. Then the mayor came up with a suggestion. Stacked in a corner of his office, the police director kept old copies of Le Devoir. These contained yellowing articles from a few years back, when he and the future mayor had changed the city forever. Booted from the police department by a corrupt chief, Plante had absconded with his files. He then conscripted a journalist, Gérard Pelletier, to ghostwrite articles for him based on this trove of information. At the time, the newspaper and Plante were expecting hundreds of lawsuits, for Plante named names and provided addresses of the bawdy houses and gambling dens, citizens with honest reputations were being brought low and those who were known to be shady saw their stature in the criminal world clarified. The articles were so blistering in their attacks on crime and criminals, and on the failure of the justice system as a whole, that a public inquiry became necessary, which led to the dismissal of the police chief, while the mayor at the time decided to retire gracefully. Two audacious young men had led the public inquiry, Drapeau and Plante, and they followed up their success by being whooshed into power.

  Drapeau pulled an old article off the stack, plunked it down on the desk and rapped his knuckles across the page. “There’s our man,” he said. “The one who wrote these pieces for Pax.”

  “Pelletier?” Plante wondered skeptically. “He’s not that high up in life, is he?”

  “High enough. His friends go higher. Him and that other fellow … what’s his name, the one publishing Cité Libre? They’re upper crust.”

  “What’s his name?” Touton asked.

  “Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” Plante said. “But these guys are communists,” he told the mayor.

  Drapeau shrugged. “Are we asking them to run the country? Who better to provide information about fascists than communists?”

  “He’s rich?
”

  “Trudeau’s from money. Pelletier’s not exactly off a pig farm,” Plante said.

  “Harvard graduates,” Drapeau put in. “London School of Economics. Silver spoons. They move in those circles, yet they’re unionists. Maybe communists. They’re young. Foolish. Smart, though. They have integrity, I have to give them that. I read Cité Libre. They want to change the city, so we have that in common even though we disagree on a lot. Talk to Trudeau, he’s at the centre of that clique. Call your friend Pelletier. Clear the way for Armand.”

  As it turned out, the meeting would be with both Trudeau and Pelletier. Trudeau insisted that his friend accompany him, thwarting Touton’s desire to wheedle him out. Trudeau seemed to understand the premise that it’s infinitely easier to recruit someone as a police informant when he’s in isolation. Involve another person and the second-guessing commences. Since two were coming, Touton brought along Gaston Fleury to even the odds as well as to tap his expertise on the Order. Should something with the two men actually develop, he planned to set him up as a liaison.

  Touton couldn’t imagine meeting these sons of the wealthy in a tavern, so he invited them for lunch instead, at Ben’s Deli, for smoked meat.

  Both seemed amused to be talking to police officers, as though this was a lark they’d be recounting over cocktails that evening, but just as Touton was beginning to feel irritated, Trudeau calmed the waters. He seemed gracious for a rich man’s son.

  “Captain Touton, you’re quite famous,” Trudeau began. “Courageous, it’s said. Moral, I’ve heard. Gérard and me, we’ve been battling Duplessis’s shock troops, so it’s unusual for us to be breaking bread with a cop. This is odd for us.”

  Touton appreciated the candour. He knew what Trudeau meant. Provincial police had a rough reputation, as they were routinely deployed by Duplessis to break up strikes. The premier of the province would announce that the cops were being dispatched to help workers cross picket lines. When no worker chose to cross, they’d beat their truncheons over strikers’ heads until at least a few of them changed their minds. At the instigation of the premier, in another example of power run amok, the provincial cops had arrested more than a thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses for handing out pamphlets to French Catholics. While making the arrests, they smashed the furniture in the homes of the accused. Are they cops, the young men were asking in their little magazine, or political goon squads? The more they lent support to the aspirations of Quebec workers and to the powerless, the more experience Trudeau and Pelletier were gaining with police tactics.