Ball Park

by John Farrow

  Eventually, Touton came clean. ‘Didn’t expect to be working with you again, Émile. This case comes with a bigger overlap than I thought. I won’t be around to see it through. It’ll be up to you.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Two bullet holes. Identical pattern. Easily a coincidence. A prosecutor might want five bullet holes just to hear you out. Even then, he or she might laugh. Less than three won’t be considered a pattern if the defense attorney has a brain.’

  ‘We both noticed. Identical.’

  ‘Shut up and listen. Tonight’s shooting was not the second time I’ve seen that pattern. It was the fourth.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Going back in time. Memory can play tricks, but I believe I can still count. When the surgeon went down, my brain swung a bat. A foul tip. Nothing I paid attention to. When I saw Maletti tonight, I got hit by a pitch right between the eyeballs. I’ve seen that pattern before. Not only once. Twice. Four times in all. I know the killer. Of the surgeon, and of Maletti tonight.’

  ‘If you say so. Who?’

  ‘Giuseppe Ciampini, to some. Joe to the rest of us.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Cinq-Mars said.

  ‘I won’t. Catch up.’

  ‘You mean Ciampini in person?’

  ‘Exactly. Ciampini killed his son-in-law, and he killed Arturo Maletti tonight. He didn’t order either hit. He came out of his man-cave and did the dirty deeds himself. Solve these two murders, Cinq-Mars, you put Ciampini away.’

  ‘You know this how?’

  ‘Because of two murders years ago. He wasn’t always the kingpin. Was a time he was a lowlife punk on the make. He killed a mob boss back then. Getting away, he killed a cop. We couldn’t prove it. But I know he did it. Tonight the same, and also with the surgeon. Identical bullet pattern for the same reason.’

  ‘There’s a reason?’

  ‘The shot to the gut and liver inflicts the worst pain. He lets his victim roll around in misery for a minute or two. That’s why we’ve got blood in the foyer. Maletti then walked, crawled, backwards until he fell. Agony, taking one in the gut. Then he kills him. Not so much to put him out of his misery, but there comes a time to get out. One bullet to inflict the worst punishment possible, the second to do what he came to do. Through the heart, to kill the guy dead.’

  The slight smile on Touton’s face was a giveaway. He had more to reveal.

  ‘Go on.’ Interested in what his former boss postulated, Cinq-Mars pushed him. ‘What?’

  Touton lowered his voice, as though to intensify the tale. ‘The last two murders connect to the first two. Which is why Ciampini couldn’t order them. He had to do the dirty work himself. To keep a secret under lock and key.’

  What lock? What key? Cinq-Mars was wondering to himself. To Touton, he said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What connects all four? You came across it.’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘What pissed the surgeon off?’

  Cinq-Mars had no clue.

  ‘A goddamned missing baseball.’

  The story went back to Touton’s earliest days on the force. A mob boss was hit. Armand Touton was first to answer the call. The murder was meant to look like a robbery gone bad. Items were stolen. No cop believed that scenario, for no crook, not even an amateur thief, would break into the home of a mob boss. People in the rackets knew better. That same night, about a mile from the murder and before it was reported, a cop stopped a car for a traffic violation. That officer was gunned down, the pattern of wounds identical to the first shooting, but a different gun. ‘If that cop had been in my place and I’d been in his, I’d be dead on the pavement. I took it personal. Never forgot that one. I’m not a crazy-assed Catholic like you, I don’t forgive.’

  Did the cop stop the original shooter? Investigators thought so, despite a second weapon being fired. Very possibly, that second gun was stolen from the gangster’s home. Touton was handed the task of itemizing what the mob boss’s widow claimed was taken, even if the robbery was a fake cover for the hit. The short list included a pistol, and also included a baseball with her husband’s name on it signed by the legendary Jackie Robinson.

  Cinq-Mars looked catatonic.

  ‘I know you’re a religious nut bar, Cinq-Mars. Every so often, break away from the code. You should express yourself. You want to. Now is a good time. I will forgive you, Émile. Say a Hail Mary later. Let it out now.’

  Cinq-Mars thought about it. Then he said, ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘There. Don’t you feel better?’

  ‘Holy shit!’ he said again.

  ‘Don’t get carried away. I don’t want you sent to hell on my account.’

  Both men were experiencing a rare euphoria.

  ‘How come you didn’t nail him way back then?’

  ‘Nothing on him,’ Touton admitted. ‘Also, I was only a beat cop.’

  ‘How do you know it was him?’

  ‘It suited his purpose to let the street know he did it. Ciampini was the next tough guy on campus. He had to make sure that a few key people spread the rumor. He denied it in some quarters, let it fly in others. No trail to follow, though. What he was bragging about couldn’t be called evidence. That a cop died, that’s the only part that kept the case alive. Otherwise, one bad guy whacks another bad guy, who gives a shit as the years fade away? But a capital offence, that stays alive. A dead patrolman keeps it personal, not least because I was a patrolman on a different street that night and lived. The baseball would incriminate the killer if it ever showed up. Maybe it showed up in his daughter’s house. Before you know it, her husband is dead, then her lover. Draw me a connection, Cinq-Mars. Visit me in my retirement home with the news that the king is dead.’

  Cinq-Mars shook his head, reality sinking in. ‘I can’t convict on the old crimes.’

  ‘Convict on the new ones. It helps – a ton – to know who you’re looking for. And it helps to know who’s in panic mode right now.’

  Cinq-Mars concurred.

  ‘Never forget, Ciampini is more likely to fear his friends in New York than his enemies in Montreal.’

  Cinq-Mars raised an eyebrow, cottoning on.

  ‘There’s justice, then there’s gang justice. Sometimes you gotta ask, “What’s the difference?”’

  Cinq-Mars continued to demolish the carcass before him. He ripped off a wing and circled it in the air with a different thought. ‘Another shadowy figure from the old guard’s involved, Armand. This involves the dead boy in his car, maybe, and the young female thief.’

  ‘Who would that be?’

  ‘Ezra Knightsbridge.’

  Touton sat back. Cinq-Mars had the impression that he wanted to applaud. ‘A case of that old saying. What goes around the mountain, comes around again.’

  Cinq-Mars finished chewing. He couldn’t believe how hungry he was. ‘Maybe I should return the favor. Wake you up in the daytime. Pay him a visit.’

  Touton took it under advisement. ‘I guess, when I retire, I’ll switch over. Sleep at night. Prowl around in daylight. Maybe I’ll take you up on that. Go for the practice.’

  They clinked beer glasses.

  ‘Boss,’ Cinq-Mars said, ‘you’ll love it. Hunting, fishing, all daytime stuff.’

  Touton clicked his fingers. A notion stirred. ‘I’ll need gear.’

  The younger man caught on immediately. ‘I bet Ezra sells fishing rods. Is he allowed to sell firearms? Either way, I bet he has rifles lying around.’

  ‘Word of caution,’ Touton said. ‘I can’t go with you. His old cellmate might get wind. We have to be careful what we put out there.’

  ‘Old cellmate? I didn’t know he’d been inside. I thought Ezra was invincible.’

  ‘It’s not on his record. He changed his identity once he learned the hard way.’

  ‘The cellmate?’

  ‘Joe Ciampini.’

  His projected chat with Knightsbridge had more potholes than a Montreal street after a frigid winter followed by a
warm spring, which was saying something.

  Touton was beaming. ‘I got more. Hey, I don’t get you out of bed for nothing.’

  Sly bastard. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Your first vic. The kid in the car?’

  ‘Crooked?’

  ‘Straight as an arrow. He took Social Studies, whatever that is.’

  ‘This I know. So?’

  ‘He applied for the Police Academy. He was accepted.’

  ‘What?’ He was stunned. ‘No.’

  ‘Wanted to be one of yours, Cinq-Mars.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘A bonehead cop with a university degree. A brainiac. The point is, he was one of ours. Could be he was going along with the girl to help put her away. Give himself a leg up, at least in his mind. Either that or he fell in love. Or lust. This isn’t a cop killing, but the murder is starting to fit tighter to the bone.’

  Cinq-Mars had much to chew on. He vented his energies on the chicken. The news would shock Quinn. Her boyfriend had been a wannabe cop. She sure picked the wrong getaway driver for herself.

  Or had he picked her?

  Cinq-Mars drove Touton across the breadth of the island to HQ, then himself back to Park Ex. He caught a couple of winks before his alarm sounded, then called his new partner at home. ‘I’m not going in.’

  ‘You sick? Hungover again?’

  ‘I’m on the job, Yves. I need to make a side trip, and I already worked half the night. Captain Touton will vouch for me.’

  ‘I can go where you go. No law against it.’

  ‘You won’t fit in.’

  ‘Anywhere you go, I can go too. A strip club in the morning? I’m there. Gambling den? I know a few. Stakeout? Give me a dog, a Coke, and a few French fries. I can hold my piss for hours with good food.’

  ‘A convent.’

  Silence at the other end. Then, ‘OK. You can go on your own.’

  ‘Catch you later,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘Oh, did you hear? Arturo Maletti bought the farm.’

  ‘No shit. Hey! Was that overnight? You know what it means.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘A Night Patrol case. Frigault and Caron are out of the picture. Their one good suspect is no more.’

  ‘Try not to celebrate too much.’

  ‘Try and stop me. Get thee to a nunnery, Cinq-Mars. Don’t wear out your knees.’

  At the imposing front door to Our Lady of the Shores, Cinq-Mars was greeted with suspicion. His badge permitted him to posit a request, and he had reason to believe that Mother Superior Marie-France Dumont would admit him once she learned who was calling. Policemen in general might be kept at bay; he had personal history with her. Work they’d shared on a charity had been congenial.

  As expected, he was admitted. She’d met his father, in different circumstances, and asked after him. ‘He knows horses, Émile. As do you.’

  ‘As do you, Mother Superior.’ They hailed from the same rural region of Quebec.

  ‘In another time. We have none of God’s four-legged creatures within these walls, with the exception of vermin and the cats who cull their ranks.’

  The walls of which she spoke were thick stone, in place for more than two centuries. They hoarded secrets through time. Cinq-Mars knew the mother superior to be contemporary, wise and formidable; she had addressed the culture and failures within the Order. No mean task. Cinq-Mars brought up past sorrows.

  ‘You have neither his name nor his number?’ Mother Superior Marie-France inquired.

  ‘I hope to secure both.’

  ‘Why both? Sad to say, he cannot have forgotten his number.’

  ‘He knows it. I don’t. If I can show him that I can accurately repeat his number, he’ll be confident that the name I reveal is correct.’

  ‘Yes. I understand the virtue of your proposal.’

  ‘And I understand the times. This is a communication between the Order and an aggrieved young man. I see no value in the matter traveling any further.’

  ‘Yet no guarantee,’ the mother superior surmised.

  ‘None,’ Cinq-Mars admitted.

  She nodded. ‘Our past is not the secret many prefer.’

  She gave him a prolonged gaze. Of regret, of sorrow. Also, of determination. Battling ghosts and history proved a difficult war.

  Mother Superior Marie-France called in her secretary. They worked out the parameters for the date of the boy’s abdication – their word – from the orphanage. Cinq-Mars described the boy’s likely body type at the time, having garnered the information from Quinn, so that those too tall, too muscular or too heavy could be eliminated from the search. The secretary fled to undertake her study.

  ‘This should take less than a fortnight,’ the mother superior advised him. He trusted that she spoke with poetic license. ‘Many abandoned children departed under unfortunate circumstances. Previous generations of our sisters declared that they were abandoning themselves. Ridiculous in the light of day. Since then, several have made formal requests to learn their identities. We no longer deny them outright. It’s case by case. When we have the number, it’s a quick notification.’

  Without the number, his request was complicated. Cinq-Mars waited in an anteroom for half an hour. The stillness engendered by the stone walls compressed him. A resonance that echoed through time. Centuries of prayer, fasting, contemplation, ritual, lament and deprivation. Cinq-Mars had visited seminaries and monasteries – and once, a convent – when he’d contemplated the life. When the time came to decide, he rejected the calling.

  A philosophical experience for him. In stepping away from one calling, he’d deeply felt the lure of another that was also invisible, and initially unknown. Whatever his work in life, he felt it had to be as vital, life-affirming and compelling as his expectations for the priesthood. He considered a life devoted to animals and believed it to be the answer. That calling, while attractive, never exerted sufficient heft.

  Then he discovered work conjoined to a different animal: the human criminal. Justice and mercy, truth and lies, passion and compassion, to serve and protect … The calling was large enough, romantic enough, and challenging enough. Early on, Cinq-Mars accepted that he was born for the task. He demonstrated a talent for detection and seemed to possess an intuitive acumen.

  Instead of wrestling with demons of the spirit world, he opted for battling their earthly counterparts. And yet, did he not still cling to the side of the angels? He hoped that that proved true, that his life might be well spent.

  The secretary scurried past him. Sister Florence was not going to speak to him directly. She tapped timidly on the vestry door. She was quickly admitted, and without invitation Cinq-Mars followed her inside.

  The mother superior, seated at her broad oak desk, studied the report before revealing its information. ‘Please do not surrender the name until you and the young man confirm the number between yourselves. In case we miscalculated our assumptions.’

  He accepted the proviso.

  Away from the hallowed halls of contemplation and piety, he returned to work. Back on the streets of murder and deceit. Given that same decision to make again, he’d still stick his head and hands into human villainy.

  PART THREE

  THE PARK

  Tombstone Ghost

  (A rat’s ass)

  Along a ridge across the high ground of the cemetery, a figure moved with both impunity and purpose. Cinq-Mars detected a second form, this one below the ridge, less conspicuous amid the tombstones. A man of some years, it appeared, who differed from the granite by being mobile.

  Following a shower, the day was muggy under threat of more rain. A scud of dark cloud pestered the mood of the funeral. Dietmar Ferstel had died under circumstances both baffling and frightening that left his family devastated, his friends sorrowful, and a killer on the loose who unnerved the community.

  Émile Cinq-Mars discounted television funerals. In his city, people rarely made the trek to the gravesite. A service of remembrance in a sanctuary or at a funer
al parlor might be well attended, but only immediate family and closest friends continued to the cemetery. Burials on the sprawl of Mount Royal presented logistical challenges for larger groups of mourners and were discouraged. He had no intention of witnessing the internment himself, and only at the last moment changed his mind. Mourners were embarking on the lengthy walk from the funeral home, possibly because so many were young. Uninitiated into the rituals of death, what they knew about the process was gleaned from movies. They were determined to see their friend into the soil.

  The youths intrigued Cinq-Mars. Fault lines demarcated different groups. One derived from the young man’s upbringing in Park Extension – their diverse ethnic mix one clue to their identity, their discomfiture with funeral haberdashery another.

  A second conglomeration of young folk was composed of university students. They’d made no attempt to dress for the occasion. Not having anticipated the need, living far from home, they lacked the garb and came as they were, as if off to a summer class. They, too, were decidedly melancholy and bewildered.

  The third group of young people were less easy to align. His interest in them spurred Cinq-Mars to drift along after the casket. They were quiet, somber, closely knit; fewer in number than the other representative groups. They made a point of sticking together and did not mingle with other mourners. Despite this apparent aloofness, or defensiveness or mere shyness, they obviously wanted to be there. Mostly male, this third group had shown up in black. Cinq-Mars hazarded a guess that a few had purchased suits especially for the occasion. They seemed emotionally stung by Dietmar’s death and by the funeral itself. As if, Cinq-Mars speculated, they’d lost one of their own, a brother.

  Across the plateau of gravestones, against the murky, gusty sky, one lone figure lurked on her own. Not permitted to attend by dint of a grieving father’s decree, Quinn had asked Cinq-Mars to go in her stead. Then showed up anyway. She stood far off. When the final words were spoken – the reminder that dust and ashes await corporeal forms – Cinq-Mars wandered in her direction. He found her to be neither furtive nor embarrassed. Pale against the dark sky, Quinn stood still and waited for him to join her.