by John Farrow
‘I could have saved you the trouble,’ she apologized. She was wearing a pale-yellow knee-length dress with a muted floral pattern, flats, and a small woven purse. With lengthy rope straps, the clutch hung over a shoulder and fell to her hip. ‘A last-minute-type thing.’
‘Not an issue. I might have come on my own.’
‘Why?’
‘To see who showed. When a crime boss or a high-ranking gang member is involved, cops attend. We photograph the mourners.’
‘I hope you send them a copy of the album.’
‘There’s a thought.’
She lifted her purse and let it fall back again. Cinq-Mars took it as a sign of impatience. ‘Deets wasn’t in line for that kind of attention.’
‘Maybe he should’ve been.’
Without either of them saying a word, they lit off in a generally downhill direction toward a gravel path. On the way, they tramped across wet grass in need of mowing.
‘What did you mean by that?’ Quinn asked along the way.
He’d wished he’d chosen a different route. Her feet and his were getting soaked. ‘Thieves might have been here. Do you know anything about them?’
‘Dietmar didn’t have thieves for friends. Neither do I.’
‘You didn’t know him that long.’
‘Don’t be crazy.’
He could inquire if she knew that Dietmar planned to join the police department but chose to save it. The third group might have been a band of cadets, future cops, not thieves. ‘How are you getting on, Quinn?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Need a lift home?’
‘Mmm, sure. If it’s not out of your way. Thanks.’
‘I can drop you. I should make an appearance at my poste. By now, my fellow officers are wondering if I’m still on the payroll. Incidentally, did you see an old man walking around up there? He’s slipped out of sight.’
‘Up where?’
‘Between where you were and Dietmar’s grave. Off to your left.’
‘I wasn’t paying attention. Is it important?’
‘Struck me as odd. Hey, let’s pick up the pace. That cloud looks mean.’
The sky blackened as they hurried down the winding path and across the parking lot. They reached the Volkswagen Bug as the first giant drops smacked the windshield. Their arrival was followed by a cloudburst, a sufficient fury to keep them stationary and make them wait it out in the car.
Quinn removed her shoes so her feet could dry. Cinq-Mars endured in his sopping socks. He had a notion. ‘Where am I on your trust meter these days?’
‘Jury’s out,’ Quinn said.
‘How about we pay a visit to your new friend from the trunk?’
‘Leonard? I only just met him.’ She shot a glance at Cinq-Mars, then qualified her remark. ‘I guess he’s a friend.’
‘I found out his real name. We could let him know.’
Quinn stared hard at him. She would not relax her gaze. When she could not bore through his implacable exterior, she asked, ‘How would he know – or how would I know – if you’re telling the truth? Maybe you made up a name.’
‘Do you know his number?’
‘I told you. He won’t say it.’
‘I found it out. If I can verify it with him, then it follows that I also have his real name.’
He had her on that one.
‘You could tell it to me,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll tell him myself.’
He appreciated the wisdom of her proposal.
‘That’s where I am,’ he noted, ‘on your trust meter.’
‘You’re a cop. He sells weed for a living. You’re not the best fit.’
‘Oh, please. Do I give a damn who sells marijuana? What cop does?’
‘It’s still possible to put someone in jail for dealing. You’d have that over him. You might force him to tell you things. To become a snitch or a narc. Instead, trust me. Let me tell him his name.’
He continued to appreciate her point of view. She was right, too.
Quinn detected that she was gaining ground. ‘What about it?’
In his official role, he ought to maintain position over the criminal element, never allow a person of interest any measure of control. This relationship differed from the normal cop–crook warp and woof. He could tell her the trunk boy’s number and name and let her be the one to inform him. A gain to take away might be a measure of trust. A loss might be scored as well, for she’d believe that she could get one over on him. Not an ego issue – a time might arrive when she needed to believe that he could come through for her, when she might need to count on him. If she thought he was easily beat, it could work against each of them.
Cinq-Mars tried to strike a compromise. ‘How about if we let your friend decide? Go to Leonard, ask if he wants to meet me. If he says no, I might still hand over the information, or not. At his end, it’s a roll of the dice. If he agrees to see me, we don’t have a problem.’
Quinn stared out the window despite having nothing to see beyond the smear of constant rain. They both reacted to a flash of lightning. When the rumble arrived it was distant, almost comforting in its steady, grumbling litany.
‘Why meet him?’ she asked. ‘You want to, that’s pretty clear.’
‘I’m hoping to find out anything he can tell me about Arturo Maletti.’
‘He’s afraid of him. I doubt he’ll talk about a man who controls his life.’
‘Maletti no longer controls anyone’s life. He was shot dead last night. We have a good lead on who did it, so don’t worry. Leonard is not the object of my interest there.’
He had gained position again.
‘Maletti’s dead?’
‘As a doornail.’
‘I don’t know …’ she said, then stopped herself in mid-sentence.
‘What don’t you know?’
‘Why so many people are ending up dead. Anyway, what’s so dead about a doornail?’
‘Good question.’
‘Do you have an answer? I bet you do.’
He shrugged, somewhat shyly. As it happened, he did have an answer. ‘It’s an old expression. People once reused everything, including nails. When they built a door, they pounded big fat nails through the planks and the spike ends went right through to the other side, sticking out, so they’d pound them flat into the wood, bending the nails at right angles. It’s called clenching. That “killed” the nail, so to speak. It couldn’t be reused. Voilà! As dead as a doornail.’
She rarely received satisfactory answers to obscure questions. Quinn was enjoying this, as a slight smile demonstrated.
‘Ohh-kay,’ she said, in a singsong, teasing tone.
Lightening scorched the sky. Thunder shook the Beetle and the two people in it.
‘Whoa! Close!’
‘Holy …!’ Quinn called out. Too jolted to finish her sentence.
They couldn’t see or hear anything but rain. The sudden bursts were so violent they pictured trees toppling, or in flames. Often startled, they frequently grinned crazily at each other.
Cinq-Mars experienced a nudge. Readily identifiable. Quinn, in the car, was surprised by the flash of light and thunder’s boom, her face animated. She was naturally expressive. They weren’t so terribly far apart in their ages; she was nearly two-thirds his. Nothing he’d act on, and he was cross with himself that an inkling had surfaced. Nature didn’t always ask permission. In acknowledging the nudge, the sexual zing through his bloodstream, he detected his own loneliness. He had hardly had time to mourn the demise of his recent romance, and in a way lamented its end now. More troubling to him: he was noticing her. Her own loneliness. Difficult to not respond. He turned away instead. He had to snap out of it.
The next flash was further afield, across the cemetery plateau.
‘Deets is being watered in.’ She didn’t mean to be funny. She found it horrific.
Cinq-Mars had to straighten himself from his leanings. Internally, change the subject. He asked, ‘Quinn, te
ll me, where’s the baseball?’
She looked at him. Wondering how that had emerged, almost literally out of left field.
‘That’s important?’
‘Might be.’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Then neither can I, about its importance. Sometimes, Quinn, the time you buy for yourself is the time you waste.’
She gave him a different look. One he knew he deserved. ‘What the hell does that even mean?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Something my ex-girlfriend said to me. I’m still trying to figure it out. Wrong context here. Sorry.’
That bolt of lightning had burned through his usual decisiveness.
Cinq-Mars tried again. ‘What about Leonard? Should we help him?’
She nodded. Reluctant, but not intransigent. As if the lightning had charred her resistance, too. ‘He lives in the Student Ghetto. If you park where you can’t see me go in and stay in the car, I’ll ask him. If he agrees, I’ll take you to him. His place or elsewhere. But swear to me you won’t hassle him. If you do, I won’t cooperate for another second, even if you send me to juvie.’
‘Oh, like you’re cooperating now?’ Cinq-Mars chided her. He grinned so broadly that he tugged a smile out of her too. Then he said, ‘Done deal.’
The rain was beginning to let up. He started the car and they moved out of the parking lot, joining a string of cars doing the same.
The rain ceased as Quinn went off in search of Leonard. Sudden blue sky. Cinq-Mars lowered the car’s visor.
He didn’t take note of the young man approaching on the sidewalk. He had not expected him to arrive on his own, without Quinn. Before Cinq-Mars could react, the boy opened the front door of the Bug and slid in beside him.
The kid stuck out his palm. ‘Leonard,’ he said. ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m Leonard.’
‘That part I got.’
‘An expression – give a rat’s ass. I don’t, neither.’
‘How do you do, Leonard. I’m—’
‘I know who you are. A man with a big nose in a blue Bug, Quinn said. I have a question.’
‘The adjective I prefer is prominent. For my nose. Go ahead, I’m listening.’
‘What do you want with me?’
The young man had a look. Being wiry-thin and on the short side, he pulled off to perfection the persona of the scavenging intellectual on the run, as if to that mutinous manner born. According to Quinn’s story about him, that was the case.
‘I have information you’re interested in,’ Cinq-Mars said.
‘Not an answer to my question. What do you want with me?’
‘What makes you think—’
‘Your job.’
‘That’s cynical.’ Cinq-Mars studied him.
The young man didn’t back down. ‘I’m out of here if you won’t answer.’
‘My circumstances recently changed, Leonard. I was on the Night Patrol. You’ve heard of them. Now I’m working out of a suburban poste. I need connections. People on the street. You could be part of that.’
‘No fucking way. You’re asking me to be your snitch? You can forget that before you twiddle your next thumb.’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘It’s what you meant.’
‘Big difference between a connection and a snitch. A connection lets me know who’s in trouble, who’s been broken, who needs help on an emergency basis, who’s going to need long-term rehab. A snitch betrays his friends, but a connection knows who to call when things go south. Big difference.’
Leonard studied the man behind the wheel.
‘Where’s Quinn?’ Cinq-Mars asked him.
‘She’s having the time of her life. I bought her a humongous ice-cream cone. Maple walnut. She’ll show up when she’s done. Why are you helping her?’
‘Funny how you put that,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out.
‘How so?’
‘About yourself, you asked what I want with you. About Quinn, you asked why I’m helping her. Interesting. I thought I was helping you discover your name.’
Leonard searched the policeman’s eyes for some sign that he was being conned. If he was, he couldn’t figure out the angle. ‘Before we get into that—’
‘Why before? I can tell you right now.’
‘Do you know why I’m here at this moment? It’s not for my name.’
Cinq-Mars was at a loss. ‘Then what?’
‘What you told Quinn. Maletti got whacked?’
‘I don’t ascribe to TV language, but yes, you can put it that way. Somebody shot him last night. Dead as a doornail.’
Leonard adjusted his glasses. First on his nose, then behind his ears and over his nose again. He looked back at Cinq-Mars. ‘No shit.’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘This’ll change things.’
‘It’ll make a difference in your life.’
‘You gotta be careful what you wish for.’
‘I understand. The devil you know.’
‘Who’ll show up to run this popcorn stand? There’s a lot worse than Maletti. With my luck, somebody like that is on the way. I hope there’s no damn turf war. Guess who’ll be the first innocent victim, gunned down in the crossfire.’
‘What’s the likelihood of that, do you think?’
Leonard looked at him again, studied him, then shrugged. The shrug felt cooperative, rather than adversarial. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Look, here comes Quinn.’
She hadn’t quite finished her cone. The bottom tip was consumed as Leonard leaned his seat forward and she piled into the back seat behind him. As they settled again, Quinn chimed in, ‘Cough it up! What’s your name?’
A pause, then Cinq-Mars said, ‘Leonard’s been checking me out. We didn’t get to his real name yet.’
‘Oh, Leonard, come on!’ A scolding.
‘Well, what if I don’t like it?’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’
‘I think it’s a fine name,’ Cinq-Mars revealed.
‘There. See?’
Leonard took a deep breath. Before he asked for his name, he requested his number.
‘One seventy-nine. It’s written as zero-one-seven-nine. You’d be referred to as seventy-nine, though, for short. Or more commonly, as seven-nine.’
They were cocooned in the VW, sequestered by this covert knowledge. Quinn finally broke the ice.
‘Is that it, Leonard? You were seven-nine?’
He nodded to affirm what he did not want repeated. ‘Just hearing you say it gives me a migraine. And I don’t get migraines.’ Then he asked, at long last, ‘So what’s my name?’
A simple question, yet as composed as Leonard tried to be, Cinq-Mars felt the young man’s defenses jump in. As though the query had a physical effect. He glanced back at Quinn. All eyes and ears on him. Leonard revealed his uneasiness by swallowing hard and inhaling another deep breath.
Then he said, ‘Wait.’
‘Leonard,’ Quinn said. Not cross this time. Gently.
‘I’m not ready,’ he said.
‘Take your time,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘We’ve got all day.’
‘You, maybe. I’ve got a business to run.’
The three new associates laughed. With the mood lightened, Leonard was prepared to learn his real name.
Mother Love
(The Spaniard in the dining room)
Cinq-Mars left Quinn downtown to help Leonard adjust to his new name. Within two minutes of his return to his poste de quartier, he was wishing he’d stayed behind and hung out with him, too.
‘Do you deserve your pay, Cinq-Mars?’ Thin, of average height, Captain Pierre Delacroix combed his sparse hair straight back. His shoulders fell sharply away from the base of his neck, so that his head possessed a bobblehead quality, a feature that caused him to look perpetually slapped.
‘Sir, I worked half the night,’ Cinq-Mars explained, knowing it was futile.
‘T
he man says he worked all night. On what?’
‘A murder investigation, sir. Captain Touton brought me in.’
‘Touton’s a clown. What are you, his shill? Do you think I give a shit if some thug is gunned down overnight? Tell me, Cinq-Mars, were you drinking? Admit it.’
‘No, sir. I mean, I was off duty. Maybe I had a beer. After the crime scene.’
‘You admit to boozing it up and still expect a paycheck. If you spent the night in a whorehouse, would you want to be paid for that too? Paid to be inebriated. Paid to have a poke. Never mind that you don’t work for Touton. That clown does not sign your sheet.’
‘Sir, last night’s murder relates to our murder.’
‘Our murder? You’re not working any murder. What precisely is the matter with you, Cinq-Mars? Are you a maladjusted fuck-up? Is that an accurate summation?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No? Was I asking for your opinion?’
‘I thought you were, sir.’
‘I’ll let you know when I’m asking a question. Is that fucking clear?’
He wanted to ask, ‘Is that a question?’ Instead, he said, ‘Yes, sir. Sir, it relates. The murder last night, the murder in the Town here. They both connect to the robbery I’m investigating with Sergeant-Detective Giroux.’
‘You’re not investigating that robbery.’
‘I thought I was, sir.’
‘I thought so, too. Instead you come in whenever you jolly well feel like it, stick your nose into other cops’ beeswax. It’s huge, your nose, but try keeping it out of the way. And stick this between your ears. You work with Giroux, you do not fly solo. Be his bosom buddy. Give him a hand job, if that’s what it takes. Have babies together. Just don’t leave his company. I want work product out of you two, and you will produce work product as I see fit. And stay dead sober. Understood?’
He was standing waiting to be formally dismissed, a command that did not appear imminent. Delacroix went on and on about cops. ‘Do we recruit them out of drunk tanks or what?’