by John Farrow
Not for another moment would Touton think the act had been happenstance. This was indeed an attack directed upon his home.
“Thanks,” he murmured to the cop.
“Sure thing.”
Touton comprehended at that moment the odd aspect to the cop that he had missed: he was English. Among older cops, he knew a few detectives who were English, but he didn’t know any English cops who made a career on the beat.
He went back inside, and this time wrapped his wife in his arms and held her tightly. He dismissed the other officers from inside the premises and ordered two cars to patrol the neighbourhood to see what, if anything, moved. Touton assigned the senior English patrolman to guard his home until the end of his shift and commanded other officers to report back to their duty sergeant.
“You’re going back to work?” Marie-Céleste asked him once they were alone. She thought that he might make an exception on this one night.
He told her about Detective Fleury. “We got off lucky.”
“You were at work. Your car wasn’t here. That’s why we were luckier.”
“I have to stay on top of things. The homes of cops are being attacked. We can’t have that.”
“For sure. Go, Armand. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She was trying to be agreeable, but her lack of enthusiasm for his departure remained apparent.
“I’ll tuck you in,” he said. “Stay awhile. Until you sleep.”
“In this heat? After all this? I won’t be sleeping. I certainly don’t need tucking in. I’ll be lying on top of the sheets.”
Despite her protest, he saw her to bed, and kissed her good night before returning to work. The kiss was lovely. He wanted to stay.
In a drearier part of town, where hookers knelt to do their business in alleys next to pissing drunks, Detective Andrew Sloan was having to deal with a grisly mess. A murder victim had not died easily, having put up a fight. Judging by the bloodied Louisville Slugger left behind at the scene, a baseball bat had been the principal murder weapon, although punctures along the spine and through the man’s hand suggested that a thin spike had also been deployed—probably an ice pick. Electrical refrigeration was rapidly becoming universal, yet ice was still used in thousands of homes. The ice pick remained a common household utensil on the tougher streets.
“Know him well?” Sloan asked the beat cop, Lajolie, a surly character with a dark reputation. He usually came in from his shifts with his knuckles bloodied. He liked it that way, relished getting physical with garbage scroungers and young toughs. He wasn’t into talking to the riffraff much, preferring instead to shove guys into a wall to get them moving. Nobody suggested that he wasn’t a ballsy scraper, somebody to have on your side if negotiations got feisty. But some bad talk went on around him, that he preferred to work the Main because he made the whores pay a toll in kind. Others suggested that he seemed to spend more money than the average beat cop earned. So far, the department had let it go.
Lajolie shrugged. He didn’t like this detective. Sloan worked on the Night Patrol, and those guys were serious about cleaning up the city. A wacko squad. The way Lajolie looked at it, a dirty city was good for business. Besides, nobody trusted Armand Touton, the head of that bunch. He was a reformer, and reformers were suspected of selling their own kin down the St. Lawrence River.
The joke that went around the locker room suggested that the reformers even sold out their own, but at a discount.
“Don’t know him?” Sloan persisted. He couldn’t accept that Lajolie wasn’t on a first-name basis with everyone down here.
“I know him a bit. Used to be a doorman at the Copa. Doorman—call it what you want. Different name, same shit. He’s a leg-breaker. He’s got a record, but something’s odd in his story. In some strange way, it’s like he’s connected to the Church. Some people called him ‘The Bishop.’ He hasn’t caused any trouble in a while that we know about, but he hangs out with the same guys we spot around polling booths at election time. If he was voting, he wasn’t doing it only once.”
“He’s got a name?”
“Michel Vimont.”
“Seen him around lately?” Sloan asked.
“Not so much. One time. Outside some club. Leaning on a car. Some limo. I told him not to scratch the paint. He laughed. Said it was his new profession.”
“What profession?”
“Driver. Chauffeur. Different name, same job, you know what I mean?”
This time, Sloan wasn’t sure. “What do you mean?”
“Once a thug, always a thug. ‘Chauffeur,’ it’s another word for bodyguard … an arm-breaker.”
Sloan got it. “Who for?”
Lajolie shook his head. “Never waited around for the fat-ass to come out. Assholes who can’t drive their own cars, they’re all the same to me.”
“The limo … was it black?”
Lajolie thought the question was stupid. What did it matter? “Yeah. Black. Think so. Probably black. Just don’t bet the paycheque on that, okay?”
Sloan nudged his fedora higher on his head. “Okay,” he said. “Ask around. Work your contacts on the street. I’d like to know who his boss was. Keep on it until you find out.”
“You bet.”
The alley was a good place for muggings and murder. Garbage cans rattled around at night, fed by the greasy-spoon restaurants or knocked over by drunks. Roughhouse noise rarely alerted anyone. He’d canvass the neighbourhood, but finding a witness did not look promising. As well, the incident had occurred around closing time—the blood on the pavement hadn’t fully coagulated—so the street had been noisy, the pedestrians drunk—a good time for a bloody brawl to the death.
Sloan walked over to a second uniform—Lajolie’s partner for the night, a rookie by the name of Leduc who was filling in for the regular guy on his summer vacation. Just that short walk was messy, the slime of rotten vegetables underfoot and the stink of piss and vomit and cat spray. Old newsprint was stuck to the pavement, pressed down under organic compost that may have included human excrement as well as dog feces.
“Who the hell found the body way back here?”
“Blow-job Granny. We let her go.”
“Who?”
“She blows old guys for draft beer. Lajolie told me that anyway. She’s old. Seventy, maybe. Looks a hundred and two. Her johns must be totally smashed.”
“So she took some guy back here?”
“That’s the story. She had no reason to lie.”
“You let her go before she talked to a detective?”
“Lajolie says she won’t go far. She never does. She’s real loony, Detective. And a little disgusting. We didn’t exactly want her around.”
“What about the guy she was with?”
“Lost his cookies and beat it. Lajolie paid Granny a buck for giving us a call.”
“Okay. Is there a telephone around some place?”
Over the phone, Sloan was informed that his boss wasn’t available, that he’d gone off on a pursuit of his own. He then asked to have the victim’s record run down. “Michel Vimont, that’s the name.” He also wanted to know who the coroner was going to be, which was not usually his business, and when he wasn’t satisfied with the answer he requested a replacement.
“A fight on the Main got out of hand—what’s the big deal?” the dispatcher asked him.
Probably it was no big deal, he replied, but he had a hunch. He wanted a more experienced coroner. Sloan got his wish. He then asked to have a message delivered to Touton’s desk, a question: “Interested in a dead chauffeur?”
“That’s all it says?” the dispatcher asked, his curiosity piqued.
“Just say that. I’m going to see the body gets into the morgue truck, then beat it home. I’m bushed. Put the stiff’s rap sheet on my desk.”
Sometimes it took awhile to sweep a body off a street. The morgue guys were never too swift in the middle of the night. They usually stopped for a drink along the way. A coroner had to be fetc
hed out of bed, and that could require more than one call to make sure he’d stayed awake. Then he might drop himself off at a strip club first, to acquire a taste for the evening air and to make the outing more worth his while. Dawn had arisen before Sloan finally departed the scene, and the soft light of morning had not improved the alley’s disposition. If anything, the space seemed to stink more once the detritus of city waste had become fully visible.
Light of day sprinkled gasoline on the fire of Armand Touton’s rage. By the time the Night Patrol convened the following evening, his emotions were in an uproar. His commentary to his fellow officers lacked his usual insouciance.
“If these motherfucks think they can … Mother of God, they better shit in their own soup … maudit câlice … we’re going to vomit down their throats and tape their mouths shut … make them blow puke out their nostrils, these fucks!”
He’d had a few drinks, which didn’t help, but a day of dwelling on the audacity of punks slathering paint on his stoop and awakening his wife from her slumber, not to mention blowing up Fleury’s Chevy, had him in a lather.
“Dynamite, that’s the word. Three sticks—three too many! I want to know where those sticks came from. Lean on every shit-eating dung hole in this town. I want to know where those sticks came from, who bought them off who for how much, and I want to know exactly how much change the motherfuck got back! I want to know every fucking detail about that transaction. This city is not going to rest until it comes across with that information. You got that? Does everybody in this room understand what we’re doing tonight?”
No one did. None of them had shaken down a city looking for information about dynamite, but no one would confess to their ignorance either, not with their leader in that mood.
“They made a mistake, the shit-eating skunks,” Touton confided in a quieter, intense voice. “Two mistakes, if you want to know the truth. They painted a swastika on my door, and that tells me they think they can hold my military career in disrepute. Do you understand what I’m saying? If they think they can fuck with me, they’ll shit their pants before I’m done with them! Second, they blew up Gaston Fleury’s Chevrolet. His fucking Bel Air. Know why that’s a mistake? Because it pins the two events together. It lets me know that they believe they can shit on my porch. They can’t shit on my porch! They can’t mess with my officers! Not with any one of you! They want to scare our wives? I’ll scare the dicks right off their balls! They want to mess with a policeman’s property? They’ll wish they were sleeping on a cot in Siberia before we’re done. You got me?” He scanned the roomful of still, scarcely breathing officers, daring any one of them to twitch. Then he spoke in a deep, growly voice. “Who sells dynamite in this town? Find that out for me. Who steals it? Who offers it up for sale? Who buys it? Pull out fingernails if you have to, but find that out.” After scowling over his crew, he finished by asking, “Any questions?”
Everyone had questions, but no one dared voice them, the exception being Detective Andrew Sloan, who raised his hand slowly.
“What?” Touton snarled at him.
The others in the room held their breath. They hadn’t wanted any questions. They wanted to get on the job, not because they were particularly enthusiastic about getting started, but because they wanted out from under the furious eyes of their leader. They immediately wished that Sloan had not raised his hand, and when he spoke off topic, the room, as one, wanted to shoot him.
“I had a murder last night,” he stated.
Touton glowered at him. “Deal with it. We got more important shit to scoop right now.”
“You didn’t get my message? This could be important in other ways.”
“Deal with it, I said! Don’t bother me with your little problems off the street!”
Sloan was surprisingly petulant. “Nobody got hurt,” he murmured.
“What?” Touton fired back at him. “What did you say?”
“I’ve got a chauffeur shot dead in an alley. You’ve got paint on your doorknob. I say my case is more important.”
Both men could feel the entire room silently groaning. Historically, Sloan was the one man willing to stand up to Armand Touton anytime the captain got wild. Touton had noticed the trait himself, and for that reason alone he valued his colleague, even though he made life difficult for him from time to time.
“Investigate,” Touton hammered back at him. “Report. Don’t bother me. You got that? Is that too much to ask? If it’s too much to ask, I can have you transferred to bicycle theft. I’m sure they could use your expertise.”
Warily, a few detectives chuckled. When Touton wanted to ridicule a member of his squad, he always used the same threat, which apparently he found amusing. They felt the need to laugh along.
“Some detective pissed somebody off,” Sloan objected, “so they blew up his car when he wasn’t in it. They knew he wasn’t in it. The car was empty, sitting by the curb in the middle of the night. It’s a big deal—I agree with you on that, it is a really big deal, but I’m just saying—”
“I don’t really care what you’re just saying—”
“No kidding. I think that’s my point.”
“Sloan.”
“What?” the detective asked.
“My office,” the captain replied. “Now.”
“Fine.”
That’s what he wanted anyway. A chance to have it out with Touton, and if that meant going toe to toe in private, so be it. Sloan followed about ten strides behind his boss as the captain departed the room and headed down the hall. The others in the room, finally free to broach their duties, were relieved, and a few were delighted that Touton had caught a sacrificial minnow to munch upon.
Back in his office, Touton was surprisingly conciliatory.
“What’s your problem?” he asked Sloan, having moderated his voice.
“You’re not seeing the forest for the trees,” Sloan said. Then he toned himself down also, adding, “As I see it.”
“So you like this chauffeur to be the limo driver the night the coroner was killed? The night Roger Clément went down?”
“He’s a punk limo driver. He’s dead. That’s all I know. But that’s enough to check him out, don’t you think? That’s all I’m saying.”
Touton sat down. “You are aware that we’re not officially investigating that case? Speaking about it out loud before the entire squad doesn’t help us at all. You’re aware of that, right?”
If he’d heard that, he’d forgotten. “Sorry,” Sloan said.
“So what’s the bee in your bonnet?”
Sloan had thought that this was going to be a tougher point to get across to his superior officer, and he wanted now to deliver his opinion with the appropriate emphasis. He realized that he might actually have preferred the opportunity to sting the captain in a verbal fight, something that might have given his point a heightened credibility. Unfortunately, he would have to stake out his position without the lustre of passionate engagement.
“Everybody’s going on about the car-bombing and the paint job on your door last night. Okay, I’ll concede that those are nasty things. But why would anyone do that? That’s what I keep asking myself. If the goal was intimidation, that’s one thing, but if we don’t actually know who did it, how is anyone being intimidated? Just because your door—”
“This is not about my door,” Touton said tersely. “This is about my wife being terrified.”
Sloan backtracked a little. He would have to compromise his attitude. “I understand. That’s bad, that people would target a man’s wife like that.” He breathed in deeply. “Armand. I have a theory, all right? Let me just spit it out.”
Touton nodded to give him at least slight encouragement.
“Everybody’s going on about those events, but maybe that’s the idea. Those things were distractions, maybe. If so, the bad guys sure as hell succeeded in what they’re doing—”
“Distractions?”
Sloan could feel Touton’s anger rising again. �
��Let’s say somebody wanted to kill another man, that that killing was involved in a case you were working on. The killers knew you’d take an interest and they wouldn’t want that. Absolutely, they would not want that. So they give you something else to think about instead, and that way they get to walk away from a murder without you ever taking notice.”
Touton leaned back in his chair. He was tired, fuelled by caffeine and alcohol, but what his detective was saying made sense. He leaned forward, checked information off a sheet, and wrote down an address for Sloan like a physician jotting a prescription. He tore the sheet off his pad.
Sloan accepted the paper and read it. “Who’s Carole Clément?”
“Roger’s wife,” Touton explained. “She called today. She was listening to the radio.”
“And …?”
“She heard your dead man’s name. She wants to talk about him. We’ll go see her together, all right? Keep it quiet. Meet me there, ten-thirty. I might be late.”
Sloan stood up. For a while that evening, he thought his boss was off his rocker. Now he realized that he was a step ahead of him, again. If the affairs of the previous evening were indeed a ploy, whether by accident or design, Touton had made it look as though he’d swallowed the bait whole. The performance in the squad room had been for show. Sloan understood that he had nearly screwed it up.
“Sloanie, take a meandering route to get there.”
“I will,” the detective promised. “I’ll be—what’s the word?—circumspect.” He paused on his way out. “So getting everybody to hunt down dynamite, that’s about the Sun Life as well, right? Or Fleury’s car and the Sun Life.”
Touton grunted, stood also, and the men went their separate ways.
Touton headed off on a quest for different quarry. He’d arranged an evening rendezvous with a Montreal psychiatrist, one who had inscribed his name on the infamous petition requesting sanctuary for a French war criminal. The man’s name was Camille Laurin. Carole Clément had labelled him as a man who hated strikes, and given that her husband had disrupted a few picket lines in his day, the possibility lingered that the two of them might have had recent contact.