River City

by John Farrow

  We call him C.T.”

  “Holy shit,” Touton sputtered out. This changed a few things. It helped.

  “It’s about time I got a reaction out of you. Do you know the Taverne Boucheron, Captain?”

  “Of course.” On rare occasions, he went there himself to enjoy a few glasses of draft. Back in the good old days, he’d followed more than one perp into the establishment to see what company he chose to keep.

  “Stake it out.”

  “Who and what am I looking for?”

  “It’s a rendezvous point. C.T.'s favourite spot. Always was. Apparently, that hasn’t changed. Here.” One more photograph. Of Cossette-Trudel emerging from the Boucheron Tavern.

  “Who does he meet there?”

  “Sympathizers. Doctors. Lawyers. Pipefitters. Men with cash—the ones you haven’t rounded up yet. Couriers.”

  This was gold. Touton couldn’t help but smile. He wanted to say that it felt like old times, meaning that part of this experience invoked those days when he had worked with her father and mother, but he thought he’d be better served keeping that opinion to himself.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He could tell that she was a bit proud of herself, but the moment was not about satisfaction. She turned away, unable to be fully content with her work.

  After downing their coffees, they were each set to depart in different directions. This time, Anik did meet the captain’s look. She held his gaze quite steadily. Then she turned, kissed Émile’s cheeks, and tore off.

  They watched her go.

  She was almost running by the time she went through the door, and she got her handbag jammed up. She wasn’t accustomed to carrying one, and had to free herself to get loose.

  “Good work,” Touton told his protégé.

  Cinq-Mars merely shook his head. Nothing accomplished here felt remotely related to police work. “You’ll keep her out of it?” he asked. “She doesn’t want any of this coming back on her. I’ve made that promise, that it won’t.”

  Touton didn’t need to treat a young cop with such deference, but these were brutal times. He’d never lived through anything like it. They were engaged in the largest manhunt in human history, and today the two of them were on the brink of cracking it wide open. Yet neither man would ever receive credit. That was the price to be paid to broker this deal.

  “We’ll pass along Anik’s tips to the Mounties.”

  “How come?”

  “For her security. This way, none of the people who break the case will know where the good juice came from. They’ll say it was from Montreal cops, and laugh—think we were too lazy to follow up on the leads ourselves, maybe too dumb to recognize their value. Our force will have to eat more shit. But Anik stays secure this way, and the job gets done, because a few of those Mounties do good work.”

  “They might not listen to you. They might think a tip from a Montreal cop can’t be worth a plugged nickel.”

  “First off, it won’t come from me. They’ll take me too seriously. Later on, they might mention that it came from me, and we don’t want that. So you tell them. You’ll look like a dumb lunk for not knowing you had a good tip. You aren’t worth mentioning because you’re too junior. Then I’ll follow up, to make sure the news gets checked out. Émile, we’re going to get these guys. We’ll put a stop to this.”

  Nodding, Cinq-Mars pulled on his woollen overcoat. For close to sixty days, the city had been in torment. “That’s our job. It’s good to finally get it done.”

  His captain clamped a hand over his near shoulder and gave it a good hard squeeze. Cinq-Mars could feel the man’s legendary strength in that grip, not all of it lost to the passage of time. “A case like this could make your career, set you for life. You don’t mind giving up the credit?”

  He shrugged, then pointed to where Anik had gone. “Keep her safe. I mean it, Captain. That’s all the credit I need right there.”

  Yves had been away, and was overdue. He strolled down the block with his usual loping stride, oblivious to the world, and rang the bell of their street-level apartment. Inside, the men detached the dynamite booby trap on the door and admitted him. “They didn’t stop you?”

  “Who?”

  “The flics! They’re all around us.” “You’re imagining things.”

  They booby-trapped the door again. Later, the lights went out. After that, someone trespassing on their lawn tried to turn the water off to their building. Yves pointed his M1 at the intruder and told him to bugger off. The man scampered back to the other side of the street, fearing he might be shot in the ass.

  So now it was official. They were under siege.

  Then the phone rang. They were expecting the call. The woman answered and listened, then suddenly hung up.

  “It’s not only the flics.” She spoke calmly, quietly. She’d been crying in her bed lately and getting angry at odd moments, but now she could not fake surprise or show emotion. “The army’s here, too.”

  “What did he say?”

  “'We have you surrounded.’”

  They did not run to the windows to check. Instead, they seemed to observe a minute’s quiet, although the time could not have lasted that long. To Cross, the interval seemed endless. He detected a change in the atmosphere, a charge. Suddenly, he was the most powerful person in the apartment, no longer the weakest. Before they spotted cops, someone had gone to fetch him water and had left the door open. Blindfolded, he saw nothing, but he listened through his pores for any indication of news. Had the woman really mentioned cops? The army? Was something going on? Was he dreaming? Then he heard the boots of the heaviest man pound across the kitchen floor, towards the window. The venetian blinds rattled slightly as they were parted. Then they shook again, as if suddenly pushed back. Cross tried to see every sound he was hearing and visualize the silences.

  The man said, “Shit.” In his inflection of the word, Cross registered sorrow.

  The phone rang again, and they all jumped.

  “Should we answer it?”

  It buzzed a second time.

  The woman answered again. “We have demands,” she said. She remained quiet.

  “What the fuck’s he saying?”

  “Wait!” She listened a little more. Then she hung up the phone.

  “What did he say?” the man asked, quietly this time.

  “He said they don’t want any more violence, nobody has to get hurt, we’ve all been through enough, it’s time to give up peacefully. The usual cop bullshit rhetoric. He asked for our demands.”

  “Read the fucking manifesto!” one guy said, but his companions failed to goad him on. Manifestos read over the airwaves were hollow gestures now.

  “What did you tell him?” one guy asked, and even Cross wanted to slap him awake.

  “You were in the room, weren’t you?”

  The phone rang again.

  “I’m answering this time.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is it always you?”

  The man who answered was the one who had gone to fetch Cross his water.

  “Yeah?” he said, and listened. He put on a snide voice. “You don’t need to know who you’re talking to.” A moment later he repeated, “You don’t need to know that.” He still sounded as though he wanted to pick a fight, but the next time he spoke, he was subdued. “Yeah, so? That’s me. So?”

  “Don’t tell him that,” the woman hissed at him.

  The man suddenly shouted into the phone, “No, asshole! You listen to me. We want a plane to Cuba.”

  “Holy shit,” another of their number said. This was feeling real to him.

  “That’s right. We got Cross in here. We’re prepared to kill the fucker. A bullet between the eyes, maybe one in each eye. You want no more violence, get us a fucking plane.” He waited for a response. “Yes, he’s still fucking alive, do you want to talk to him?”

  He walked straight to Cross, but the cord got stuck in the door. The woman yanked it free again.
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br />   “Tell them who you are,” he demanded, and thrust the phone against the side of his captive’s face.

  “This is Jasper Cross,” he said. He realized suddenly that these were the first words he’d spoken in his own language in two months. He wanted to bawl. “I’m all right.”

  The man stomped back to the kitchen. “Get us a plane or we’ll have a shootout. Cross goes down first, then a few cops.” Suddenly, he bellowed to one of his pals, “Get away from the fucking window! Do you want to get shot?”

  “Give me the phone,” the woman demanded. Apparently, her colleague acquiesced, because she spoke next. “Who the fuck am I talking to?” A moment later, she spit out, “You don’t need to tell me about my fucking language, pig! I’ll say whatever the fuck I want. No, you calm down.” She took in the caller’s response and shot back, “Go fuck yourself, all right? I’m not talking to you. I’m not talking to any fucking Mountie…. No! I’m not going to put the other guy back on. You talk to me, only it won’t be you. You guys want to talk to me, put somebody on from the SQ or a city cop, then call me back. We’re not talking to Mounties in this house.”

  She hung up.

  Quietly, somebody said, “Fuck.”

  Another man said, “Somebody calls back, says he’s SQ. How will you know? He could just be a Mountie saying he’s SQ.” “There’s TV cameras,” a man said.

  “Get away from the fucking window. I’m not going to fucking tell you again.” Someone slammed a tabletop, then kicked a wall.

  The woman was pacing, her clicky shoes tapping out a rhythm on the floor. “That’s how we’ll do it,” she said. “Television. They’ll have to show us who we’re talking to.”

  “That’ll work,” someone said.

  “No, it won’t,” another man said. “The power’s off. Anyway, we still won’t know who we’re talking to. We’ll be talking to some guy. That’s all. Some guy in a suit. We won’t know who he works for.”

  “That’s true,” the woman conceded.

  “Does it matter who we talk to?”

  “I’m not talking to any goddamned Mountie. I’m a Quebecer. It’s humiliating! I’ll only talk to one of our own.”

  “Mounties can be Quebecers, too.”

  Now she was furious. “Don’t talk to me about those turncoat pricks. I’m not talking to a Mountie and that’s that. I’m not talking to one of Duplessis’s goons, either. That’s not a legitimate government of the people. A city cop. That’s it. That’s all. That’s the only flic who can negotiate for their side. You don’t like it? Go fuck yourself!”

  “Calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to fucking calm down.” Cross could almost see that she was speaking through clenched teeth. “That Mountie shit said that to me.”

  “Okay, look,” another man interceded. “She’s right. Mounties, they take training in negotiations. We don’t want to talk to somebody like that.”

  “Make it some cop we’ve seen before. We’ve seen some guys on TV. Pick one of them. That way we know who it is.”

  “What about Touton? We know what he looks like. It’s probably bullshit, but he’s got a reputation for integrity.”

  The phone rang again and the woman picked up. She listened. “We changed our minds…. No, you’re wrong, I can do that…. Well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you were dropping by tonight. Maybe we’re not fully prepared.” She waited a longer time before she spoke again, and when she did, her voice was low and threatening. “We’ve got James Cross in here, alive. We’re willing to kill him. Now, listen to me … NO! You listen to me right now. We don’t want SQ. All those old SQ guys were handpicked by Duplessis to be his thugs. We’ll negotiate with a city cop. Armand Touton, that’s our guy. Don’t call us back until he’s on the line. We want to see him on TV, so turn the fucking lights back on.”

  They were pleased with that episode. They felt they’d won a round.

  “Now what?” somebody asked. Cross strained to listen. He was confused for a while, as were his kidnappers, but he gathered that big searchlights now shone on the exterior walls of the building.

  “Don’t worry about it,” somebody suggested. “It’s only for the TV cameras.”

  “Are you kidding me?” the woman shot back. “It’s for the goddamned snipers.”

  They caught the commentary of their demise on television.

  The five sat on the kitchen floor as army sharpshooters took aim at their apartment bathed in bright lights. In the distance, a perimeter of spectators formed, and they saw for themselves that no one demanded their freedom. The atmosphere verged on the festive. People were having fun, sharing jokes, waiting and watching, and probably a portion hoped to witness a bloodbath—some kind of action. They wanted to be nearby if the kidnappers fell in a rage of bullets and dynamite.

  They wanted Bonnie and Clyde, the movie, but just the ending.

  A hail of bullets.

  This could look like war.

  Behind the barricade, a TV reporter conducted people-on-the-street interviews. A few people spoke of their sadness that “the boys” had been caught. “What about me?” Louise had demanded of the TV set, then laughed, although a twinge of bitterness could be detected in her complaint. In his room, Jasper Cross, bitter also, thought to himself, Yeah? So what about you? Nobody’s sad that you’ve been caught, and inwardly laughed at his private joke.

  One wizened old guy said that the cops should blow up the house and be done with the nasty business. “What about James Cross?” the reporter asked, and in his darkened chamber, Cross thought, Thank you, sir, for asking that question. At least there’s one journalist left with half a conscience. The old geezer teetered, perhaps in a drunken stupor, and waved his hand at waist height as if polishing the hood of a car. He was fighting for his words, then concluded, “Blow them up!” The reporter moved on, guessing that the old guy didn’t really understand the question.

  The phone kept ringing. They kept answering. The Mounties were right on what they said about that. They weren’t going to shoot James Cross just because the cops made a phone call, now, were they? So the Mounties won that one. They could always take their phone off the hook, but the cops said that Captain Armand Touton was on his way. If that’s who they wanted to talk to, then he’d be the guy. But they had to be patient. Give him time to cross the city. He couldn’t fly, now, could he?

  They knew how long it took to cross the city. He should have arrived by now.

  “While we’re waiting,” the woman said, “you should be getting a plane ready for us. We need lots of fuel. If you won’t give us a plane, then pick out a coffin for your precious Mr. Cross. If you want, you can hear his preferences—what kind of wood and all that. I’ll get him to write you a list.” She hung up. Her voice sounded tired, her responses half-baked. Cross sensed her defeat. He presumed the Mounties could sense it, too. He didn’t know if that helped his situation, or not.

  Then the Mounties called to say they should select an intermediary as well. Someone to be a runner between them and Touton.

  “How come?”

  “Because we’re cutting the phone line now.”

  “Don’t—”

  The line went dead.

  Each of them took turns listening to the silence on the line. No dial tone. Like death.

  “They’re punishing us,” one of the men said.

  “For kidnapping Cross?”

  “For cutting them out of the negotiations.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” Cross called out.

  “It’s the excitement,” somebody muttered.

  “Keep your pants on,” the woman called through to him. “I’ll take you.”

  One more humiliation before they were done with him.

  She told him the news. “They’ve cut the phone line. We need an intermediary. A go-between, to talk to their go-between, whom we named for them. We got more go-betweens than we got hostages.” His piss flowed out of him while she listed all their troubles.

  �
��You only have one hostage,” Cross reminded her. “Me.”

  “That’s it. We got to take good care of you from now on.”

  They threw a message out the window in a cardboard cylinder they took from a roll of paper towels. Mistaking it for a stick of dynamite, the nearest cops ran away. Inside the house, they had a good laugh over that. For an interval, a measure of their stress dissipated. The cops crept back and picked up the message, and seeing them so tentative and frightened was good for another laugh.

  Captain Armand Touton waited outside in his car and once more leaned on the horn. This time, it had an effect. Émile Cinq-Mars dashed out the door of his second-floor apartment. Then braked on the stairs, scooted back up, locked the door properly, and scampered all the way down the stairs again. He went around to the side and got in the front passenger seat, surprised that it was just him and the boss.

  Touton slapped a flashing magnetic cherry on his rooftop, and they were off at high speed.

  He didn’t tell Cinq-Mars where they were going, and the young cop didn’t ask. Along the way, the junior officer asked him, “Why do you want me there, anyway?” “You’ve been watching the news?”

  “Who hasn’t been?”

  “I’ve been asked to do the negotiating.”

  Cinq-Mars could not contain his surprise. “You? By the Mounties? Why?”

  “Not Mounties,” Touton snapped. “Would that make sense?”

  Cinq-Mars was confused. “I didn’t think so. Then who?”

  “The terrorists. Who else?” He spoke as though he did not expect the young man to believe him.

  He was still confused. “I didn’t know you knew them.”

  The senior cop shrugged. “Neither did I. But they like my style.” He smiled. “A lawyer, his name’s Bernard Mergler, he’s the go-between, but I negotiate for our side.”