by John Farrow
‘No, you’re not,’ he corrected her, forgetting how stubborn she could be, and what little authority he’d exercised through the years.
‘Jornet, Dad, the manager, he’s a …’ Once again, she stopped herself. She would have thought otherwise, yet when push came to shove, she did not have the audacity. ‘The c-word, Dad. Not the one for a man.’
‘Quinn! Don’t you dare say that word!’
‘I didn’t!’
‘Get it out of your head!’ He shook the spoon at her, the one he was using to stir the meatballs. Red sauce splattered across the floor.
‘Dad! Watch what you’re doing!’
‘Get it out of your head!’
‘All right! I didn’t say it. But that’s what he is. Coach Jornet is a c-word. The word for women.’
‘Oh, will you please—?’
‘Ask yourself, why am I saying that? Think. He used to coach the juvenile team. Before that, the midgets. How old are they, Dad? How old? Think. I hung around those teams. Your daughter. Around that age, I had a clue. Since then, I had it confirmed. Confirmed, Dad! Coach Jornet is a c-word for women.’
He stared at her, then went back to stirring the meatballs in their sauce. He turned on the burner under a second pot to boil water for the noodles. ‘I’ll kill him,’ he said.
‘I took care of it,’ she told him, the words out before she could stop herself.
He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
He turned. For once in his life, he stared her down. ‘What does that mean, Quinn?’
‘Nothing! I broke into his car. He left his wallet in the glove box during games. Safer than the clubhouse, which is like an open invitation to thieves. Money, credit cards, driver’s license, the whole nine yards. I took his wallet and went down to the expressway. I ripped his stuff into bits and dropped them off the overpass, like confetti. The money, too. I wasn’t taking nothing that belonged to that c-word for women.’
He gazed at her and pictured her doing all that and wondered who this woman could be. Not his little girl. ‘When he asked me, years ago, to coach, I didn’t want to interfere in your life. You were at the ballpark a lot back then. I didn’t want to be in your way. I thought I should be home for you, when you came home. You’re older now. I thought, maybe it would be all right now. Me, coaching third.’
‘Dad.’
‘Don’t worry. I won’t. I might kill him instead.’
‘Don’t do that, either. Like I said. I took care of it. I left his wallet on a railway track. Oh, and maybe I keyed his car a little.’
‘You keyed his car? Who are you?’
That made them both laugh, through tears flooding their eyes.
‘Don’t do anything, OK? I don’t want you in jail. I need you around. For your spaghetti.’
‘You’re growing up. Spaghetti goes good with red wine.’
‘I’m underage, still.’
‘Right. If you’re underage, I’m the middleweight champion of the world.’
‘Really? You think you can take Monzón?’
‘You know Monzón? He’s a great champ.’
‘You can take him.’
‘Not in this lifetime. But saying that makes you not underage.’
‘That makes no sense.’
‘Cops on my doorstep looking for my daughter makes no sense.’
‘Dad, come on, I’ll call them. But there’s nothing I can tell them.’
‘Red wine. In the pantry. Pour.’
She went looking. ‘Is this that homemade stuff from the Italians down the lane? It’s terrible!’
‘How do you know it’s terrible? It is, but how do you know?’
‘They let us kids drink it. They don’t think it’s wrong. It’s a different culture.’
‘Top shelf. A real bottle with a real label. Not the rotgut from down the block.’
‘Thank God.’ She found it.
‘Tonight, we’ll be a different culture. Your mom enjoyed red wine.’
‘Did she?’
They so rarely mentioned her. They both thought of her constantly and yet kept those reminiscences private.
They had a good time. When they both headed off to their bedrooms, they were rosy and laughing. Quinn had to promise to call the police in the morning, which put a damper on her mood as the dizziness in her head hit the pillow.
Homicide Won’t Know
(The fireball)
His skull felt like the clapper inside the Liberty Bell.
Once again hungover, a morose Émile Cinq-Mars met his station commander for the first time. He wore sunglasses, which he declined to take off. Captain Pierre Delacroix tore a strip off his hide and demanded for a third time that he remove the sunglasses ‘in-fucking-doors!’ He brayed an assessment to the entire poste: ‘Now we know why he got his soggy ass kicked off the Night Patrol.’
He objected to the description ‘soggy’, but feebly. And thought, ‘Saggy, not soggy.’ Though he didn’t approve of that description, either.
Second day on his new job and he was being sent home. Sergeant-Detective Yves Giroux watched him go out the door. Back-to-back epic hangovers provoked suspicion.
Home, Cinq-Mars slept it off in a comatose stupor.
The telephone woke him. A buzz-saw slicing through his scalp.
‘Yeah, what?’ he answered. He slurred both words.
‘Get washed, shaved, feed yourself. Picking you up in forty minutes.’
The commands struck him as reasonable, yet he had to ask, ‘Who’s this?’
‘Shit-bucket, it’s Giroux.’ His partner hung up before Cinq-Mars acquiesced to the edict. He sat up to verify that he remained ambulatory.
In the shower, the water assailed his chest. Twenty minutes passed before he stooped to wet his head. He was daydreaming of a tommy-gun from an old Al Capone movie. Rat-a-tat sound effects. In his fantasy, he lined up ex-cohorts from the Night Patrol and replicated the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.
He passed an electric razor over his jaw and chin. Dressed. Slapped peanut butter onto bread and wolfed it down.
He was standing by the curb when Giroux pulled up.
Checked his watch. He realized he’d slept with it on and worn it in the shower. Five forty-one. Late afternoon. An entire day lost.
He burrowed into the car.
They drove as far as the corner before anyone spoke.
‘How’d you know where I live?’ he asked Giroux.
‘I’m one helluva detective, Cinq-Mars.’
‘I’m not in the book.’
‘You’re in mine.’
‘Where’re we going?’
‘That’s your fault, too.’
‘Ah. Excuse me? What is? I was in bed all day.’
‘About that. You work days now, Cinq-Mars. Nights you sleep. Figure that one out in a hurry.’
‘Last night, it was the whole damn Night Patrol.’
‘I called. I got the story. Relayed it to the cap. Your ass survives for one more day, max.’
Cinq-Mars didn’t believe him. Then he did and thanked him. He asked, ‘Where we going?’
‘You asked that already.’
‘You didn’t answer.’
‘The fingerprints match, Cinq-Mars.’
‘Who matches?’
‘Not who. What. The robbery to the murder. Homicide doesn’t know yet. They may never.’
‘Why don’t they? You’re saying there’s no name?’
‘Still drunk? Catch up. Fingerprints are all over the passenger side of the car. Including in the blood. Those prints are a match for whoever went up the wall and into the house. What does that tell you?’
Cinq-Mars wasn’t turning over information in his head with his customary élan. ‘A buddy. A pair of thieves.’
‘Could be. Who’d be in the car a lot? Frigault and Caron asked around for us. About the dead boy. Visited his family. Talked to friends. Did their job.’
‘They weren’t asking around for us.’
‘A detail. The dead boy had a girlfriend. Who rides in a car if not the girlfriend? If those are her prints in the car, why are they also up the side of the house? If they’re not hers, she can probably tell us who drives around in her boyfriend’s car at night.’
Giroux was circling to navigate the one-way streets. They stopped outside a tiny detached house on Bloomfield Street.
‘You talked to Frigault and Caron,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘They’re cooperating with you. Not you with them. How does that work?’ When Giroux didn’t volunteer a reply, he tried a different tack. ‘The girl. Anything of interest?’
‘A phone call between her and Frigault.’
Cinq-Mars looked over and his partner fluttered his lips.
‘Lazy, huh?’ Giroux confirmed. ‘They got what they wanted to hear. Dietmar Ferstel was a sweet boy. She saw him late that night but not for long. He had somewhere to go. Didn’t say where. If she’s broken up about it, they couldn’t tell because they weren’t in the same room. They were on the goddamned phone.’
The two men emerged from the car. ‘They told you all that,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘They’re cooperating, Yves. You don’t reciprocate?’
‘They told me squat. My eyes happened to wander across a file left lying around. Maybe on Frigault’s desk. Maybe the breeze blew it open and I caught a glimpse. You owe me big time now, Cinq-Mars, did I mention?’
‘For what?’
‘I called a buddy on the Night Patrol. Pay attention. I heard what they did to you. Otherwise, Delacroix would’ve stuck your shield where you don’t dare pull it back out. You think I mean someplace nasty? I mean like in your right eye. When it comes to drunks, he’s a total psychopath. I explained about the Night Patrol giving you no choice. I was convincing. Delacroix said you can stick around, hanging by a thread. I’m supposed to put it to you that way, he said. The thread part. The hanging part, too.’
Cinq-Mars conceded. ‘I owe you a favor or two.’
They were at the front door. ‘Ring the bell, Cinq-Mars. Conduct the interview. Show me what you got.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’ Cinq-Mars pressed the buzzer.
‘Which one?’
‘What’s my fault?’
‘It was you who asked the lab to match the fingerprints. The night boss told me you came in. I’m blaming you for that. Between you and me, I’m not complaining. Just like you’re not complaining about me reading a wide-open file on a desk.’
‘Frigault’s desk is not exactly out in the open.’
‘Split hairs. I heard you were in his office, too,’ Giroux carried on.
‘The file was not accessible.’
‘Are you going to shut up about that in this decade?’
The door was opening. Before them stood a tall willowy blond, quite young, her eyes darting between them. ‘Yes?’ she asked. Then she grew more challenging. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Nice house, sweetie,’ Giroux replied. He made up his mind about her on the spot. ‘Really? You prefer prison to this pretty place?’
Cinq-Mars displayed his badge before his partner gummed up his interview. ‘Police, miss. I’m Detective Cinq-Mars. This is Sergeant-Detective Giroux. May I ask your name?’ He didn’t know. His partner hadn’t told him even that much.
‘Quinn Tanner. I talked to the police already.’
‘Only on the phone,’ Giroux interjected.
‘You were a friend of …’ Cinq-Mars had a hard time keeping non-French names in his head. He turned to his partner for assistance.
Quinn answered for him. ‘Dietmar Ferstel.’
‘She should know,’ Giroux chipped in. ‘The girlfriend. Even money says we’ll find her footprints on the ceiling of the boy’s car.’
Cinq-Mars moved over to stand in front of his partner. ‘May we have a word?’
‘That man can stay outside.’
‘He wants to sound tough. That way I’ll seem nice to you and you might be willing to talk to me. We don’t need to play those games, though, right?’
Gut instinct, the girl was clever and savvy. Meeting her on her own terms might have merit. Her blood was boiling. He couldn’t blame her. She stared at him with a judgmental gaze and tried to look over his shoulder at the one she already despised, except that Cinq-Mars was too large to permit a view. She finally gave a shrug, opened the door wider, and let them in.
‘That’s it from you,’ Cinq-Mars said.
The girl said, ‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Having a word with my partner.’
Giroux was all smiles, Cheshire-cat like.
‘That better be it from him,’ Quinn Tanner tacked on. She led them into the living room, a small, tidy space with scant light. She turned on her heels to face them. She clutched her left elbow with her right hand. ‘I spoke to the police this morning.’
‘On the phone,’ Giroux cut in. ‘Like that counts.’
‘Yves,’ Cinq-Mars censored him, ‘I’ll conduct the interview. As we agreed.’
‘Conduct. Pretend I’m not here.’
‘I wish,’ the girl said.
‘First,’ Cinq-Mars said, ‘you have my condolences on your loss. Was, ah …’
‘Dietmar.’
‘Was he your boyfriend for a long time?’
‘Part of the summer. He was super sweet.’
‘Tell her, Cinq-Mars,’ Giroux insisted.
This time he censored his partner with a look, and Giroux backed off.
‘Do you have identification, Miss Tanner?’
She shrugged. ‘Sure.’
‘She told us who she is,’ Giroux pointed out.
Her wallet was handy, on the arm of the rust-colored sofa. What she chose to hand over indicated that she went to school.
‘Do you have a birth certificate?’
‘Cinq-Mars,’ an impatient Giroux complained.
‘Born in Quebec,’ Quinn Tanner told him. ‘We don’t have birth certificates. Not from back then.’
‘Your baptismal certificate, then.’
‘Yeah.’ The document was a full sheet of paper kept safely in a corner desk drawer. Giroux raised his hands to question the infuriating strategy. She returned with the document.
Cinq-Mars asked, ‘How old are you?’ He had checked her birth date and done the math. Still, he wanted her to confirm it out loud, and for Giroux to hear.
‘Seventeen.’
Giroux’s shoulders visibly slumped. He had figured her for nineteen, twenty, like the dead boy. Being only seventeen changed everything.
‘Thanks,’ Cinq-Mars said, and handed the document back. She returned it to the drawer, then resumed her protective pose. ‘Here’s the thing, Miss Tanner.’
‘Quinn,’ she said.
‘Quinn. You’re seventeen. That gives me a bit of leeway. I have some discretion when a person is underage. If I think you committed murder—’
‘I didn’t commit murder! Come on! That’s ridiculous!’
‘I’m not accusing you. I’m only explaining that I’m permitted to bring you in if you’re only seventeen. The law does not allow me, however, to hold you in custody without permission from the DPJ, in which case they would take over your case. Do you know who that is?’
Her shrug suggested that she didn’t.
‘The director of youth protection. In French, “Directeur de la protection de la jeunesse.” Hence DPJ. That takes time and evidence. Legally, Quinn, I must inform you that I cannot hold you overnight in custody.’
‘Give her the “But …”,’ Giroux instructed Cinq-Mars.
‘But,’ he warned her, ‘I can bring you in, fingerprint you, take your photo to be placed on file. I can question you. I must notify your parents that I’m doing so. Now, you say that you did not commit murder.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it equally ridiculous that you broke into a home on the night of the murder and committed a robbery?’
> Quinn said, ‘What?’ Her response a heartbeat too slow.
‘Is it ridiculous that the fingerprints in your boyfriend’s car – which match the fingerprints of the person who broke into a house close to where he was killed – belong to you? Remember, before you reply, that we will have the answer to that question very soon. The fingerprints in the car and the house, do they both belong to you?’
In a search to remedy her plight, Quinn glanced at Giroux, as if help might arrive from that quarter. Cinq-Mars knew then, and Quinn Tanner caught on, that she was trapped.
‘It’s not ridiculous,’ she admitted.
‘You told the police in your phone call today that you were nowhere near the crime scene. I can understand why you lied. Would you like to change your testimony now? Better if you do.’
On meeting her, Giroux had assumed the girl to be an adult. Had he met her in her current state, he’d have guessed the truth. Her face contorted into that of an upset child. She was seeing something through the front window behind the detectives. ‘Oh no! My dad. He’s home.’
‘You lied to him, too,’ Cinq-Mars stated. In seconds, her father would march in.
She nodded to confirm the jam she was in now.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Jim Tanner demanded to know. He slammed the door shut. Two men were alone with his daughter, who appeared under duress.
‘Police,’ Giroux informed him. Civil, at last. He was taking point as the senior officer and showed his badge. ‘Sergeant-Detective Giroux, sir. This is Detective Cinq-Mars. We’re here to speak with Quinn.’
‘You’re not the cops from yesterday.’
Giroux had believed that the only communication with the family had been over the phone. That the father had had direct contact with Frigault and Caron undermined his jurisdiction. ‘We’re here to discuss a different crime.’
Jim Tanner held his gaze for an extended period, then looked at Quinn. She was crumbling. ‘Quinn?’
In their talk the night before, she’d told a few fibs to cover her tracks. Cinq-Mars noticed her deer-in-the-headlights look. A kid frightened to be in trouble held more promise than a kid digging a deeper hole. In his quick judgment, she was falling apart because she respected her dad. Her greatest fear was in disappointing him.
‘Do I know you?’ Giroux asked Tanner.
The query surprised Cinq-Mars, while Tanner ignored it.