by John Farrow
‘You losing me.’
‘I give Jackie’s ball to the Hall of Fame. Along with part of the story. You don’t keep the ball, but neither do I. Neither do your cousins. I don’t put you behind bars, so that’s fair, no?’
Ciampini glared back at him. ‘Let’s say,’ he said, ‘I send out my boys. Like you did. Turn this town upside down. Unlike you, I find the girl. I’m luckier. Do you think I go to so much trouble so you can send a baseball to fucking Cooperstown?’
‘Hmm,’ Touton murmured. ‘If you couldn’t find the baseball when it was in your own son-in-law’s house, how will you find a girl on the run?’
‘This helps? To insult me?’
‘I apologize, Joe. You’re obviously not too excited about the deal. Maybe if I add a sweetener.’
‘Show me the sugar, Armand. The maple syrup.’
‘Let me think.’
‘Are you still stalling?’
‘For what? I’m old and slow. Like you. Let me think.’
Shadows on the ceiling sashayed onto the walls.
Balancing on his partner’s shoulders, Cinq-Mars found that the window screen had been replaced, but not repaired. While Giroux’s knees buckled, he inserted his fingers between the twin incisions and pulled back the pair of triggers. He lifted the screen from its moorings and passed it down. He had guessed correctly that the window itself wasn’t locked, as the homeowner didn’t expect to be broken into twice. Cinq-Mars raised it, pulled himself up, and lurched inside. Looking out, he gave Giroux a circular OK signal. His partner pointed toward the front of the house, reminding Cinq-Mars that he wanted the door opened next.
Cinq-Mars obeyed orders, contrary to his partner’s expectations.
Indoors a radio blared, from the kitchen, the volume cranked up. A blessing.
Having walked through the house previously, Cinq-Mars was familiar with the layout. The living room lay vacant. He sprung the lock on the front door and Giroux crept inside.
They unclipped their holsters, took their weapons in hand.
Time at a halt.
The moment’s seriousness affected Cinq-Mars. As a calm, an inner quietude. He remained within that aura of calm, even as his pulse ticked up a notch.
He indicated the room that had been the husband’s office. Giroux listened at the door. Opened it. Glanced in. Closed it carefully. All clear. They moved toward the kitchen, where over the radio The Eagles were urging them to take it to the limit.
Cinq-Mars peeked in and pulled his head back in an instant. Savina and a man were seated in the kitchen nook. She was pulling her hair back and stretching. A beer bottle in front of the man. A bowl of cherries, or maybe grapes, between them.
Cinq-Mars held up two fingers.
Giroux made an upright pole of his forearm and fist, then displayed two fingers. In return, Cinq-Mars held up a single digit. Giroux made a suggestive impression of cupping a female breast with his free hand. Cinq-Mars rolled his eyes and agreed. Yes. One man, one woman. He signaled with his chin for Giroux to slip around the other way. Two entrances into the kitchen. They’d pounce from both.
Flashing all the digits of his free hand four times, Giroux requested twenty seconds. They counted to three together, mouthing the words. Then mentally kept up the rhythm. At twenty, Cinq-Mars charged and dug his pistol into the back of the guard’s head before Savina could react. When she did, she was confronted by Giroux’s pistol in her grill.
Cinq-Mars whispered, ‘Call out, make a sound, and you’re the deadest man alive.’
The guard considered his options.
Giroux thwarted him from doing so. He took his pistol out of Savina’s craw and shoved it against the man’s cheek, bending it inward. He leaned down to offer his counsel. ‘Screw this up, when it’s over, I will personally pistol-whip your naked balls. Capeesh?’
The man indicated acquiescence.
Cinq-Mars shifted the trajectory of his pistol to Savina’s right eye, then shook the gun to get her to stand.
On the radio, the Captain and Tennille were elaborating on what keeps them together. Cinq-Mars would’ve loved to turn them off but required their high decibel level.
Giroux provided cover while Cinq-Mars stripped the table of weapons – a handgun, a shotgun – and looked for someplace to ditch them. He decided on the fridge, to keep them cool. Then searched for a solution to his next problem.
He checked with Giroux. ‘No cuffs, right?’
‘I rely on my junior partner to carry steel.’
While they whispered, their captives scowled.
Cinq-Mars swiped two dish towels off a rack to gag Savina and her lackey. He hoped they didn’t realize how tenuous the knots were. Then he lifted the curtain rod from above the kitchen window and slid off a pair of sheer curtains. He gave them a tug, to test them. Strong enough. Long enough. Flexible enough to be stretched tightly.
He wound the curtains around the thug’s wrists and knotted them behind his back. He did the same with Savina’s, and then used the excess tails to bind the two of them together. If they ran, they’d not get far.
Done, he asked Savina, ‘Where?’
Fury and utter contempt blazed in her eyes. Sourly, she jutted her chin to indicate a kitchen door. Cinq-Mars opened it a crack. It led downstairs. That made sense. Lights were on. With his pistol, Giroux tapped the man’s testicles to encourage proper behavior. They left their prisoners bound, gagged, and knotted to each other.
They listened at the top of the stairs. With the door open, the radio would sound louder down below. Undesirable – if the guard was alert, he now had a heads-up. They started down, Cinq-Mars in the lead. The stairs emptied into a broad recreation room. A pool table in sight. Cinq-Mars peeked. He saw Quinn. Quinn saw him. He looked back at her a second time. She jerked her head slightly to her left. Cinq-Mars held up one finger. She nodded in agreement.
Just then, upstairs, Savina threw herself onto the floor. A difficult feat when lashed to another person. She tripped the other guy and yanked him down on top of her, creating an unholy thud that shook the ceiling below.
The guard reacted to the crash in a split-second. He snapped his safety off and swung his pistol up. A shot was fired. Cinq-Mars leaped left. A second shot. He believed he had not discharged his own weapon. Giroux was at the bottom of the stairs, but he didn’t have his bearings. Cinq-Mars aimed for the middle of the man’s chest. The largest mass. In the heat of the moment, bullets never land where aimed. Hands are shaky, targets are moving. Adrenalin and training and instinct. Aim to hit your foe square in the chest, right through the heart, shoot to kill. He fired.
The gunman cried out and another report shook their senses. Giroux fired as well. Bullets hit walls.
The gunman collapsed to his knees.
He’d been struck.
Either Cinq-Mars’s lone bullet or one of Giroux’s had passed through his biceps, ripping his arm open. He was done. Incapacitated. He couldn’t grip his weapon and fell back, his arm in agony. He looked at his own blood and sinew and, inexplicably, began to cough.
‘Good shot,’ Giroux murmured. Impressed. He didn’t think it was his.
Then Quinn spoke up, with bountiful profanity, not always coherently, demanding to be untied.
‘Fucking where’ve you been?’ The girl was shaking, crying, kicking her feet. She was bursting apart. ‘Where the fuck …?’
Laughing a little, tension ripping across his chest as if he’d been hit himself, Cinq-Mars holstered his weapon and worked on the knots binding her. They heard a commotion upstairs.
‘Got it,’ Giroux said, and started up.
The last knot slipped loose. Quinn jumped up from the chair and shocked Cinq-Mars, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing him close.
Then they burst apart as a shotgun blast exploded in their ears, echoing like a raging trumpet. Giroux cried out and tumbled back down the stairs. Pellets had ripped across his legs, above and below the knees. Cinq-Mars spun, his pistol out again,
and with his free arm pushed Quinn behind him.
He saw no one, only the effect on his partner. Giroux lay in anguish. His back on the floor, his legs pointing up the stairs. He swore in French, condemning the Mother Church and all her rituals. ‘Hostie, tabernacle, calice!’ The host, tabernacle, chalice. Quebec’s worst swear words, sexual profanity and body parts being left to other tongues.
‘Police!’ Cinq-Mars shouted to the shooter. ‘Drop your weapon!’
‘Save your breath, asshole. I don’t need no fucking introduction.’
No mistaking Savina’s voice. She and the guard had worked a butcher knife to slice the curtain sufficiently to free her. At her back, the guard remained entangled.
‘Savina! This is the end of it. Put the gun down.’
‘Just reloaded, fucker. How stupid you think I am? Better question, how stupid are you? I got the shotgun aimed at your partner’s face. You want a Fifth of March massacre? You put your gun down or I shoot him again. Both shells, in the eyes. He’ll bleed out through his eyeballs. After that, go ahead, arrest me. My dad will get me off. How about you drop your pistol on the pool table, Detective? Move over so I can see you. That way, nobody gets hurt too bad.’
‘Savina, you don’t want—’
She fired her weapon. Pellets scattered across Giroux’s chest. The worst of the fire hit the floor. Giroux wailed and swore a streak now, tearing down cathedrals and humping the pope.
‘The next one’s in his face! Do what I fucking say when I say it, asshole! Now! Gun on the table!’
Cinq-Mars stepped over to the pool table. He put his weapon down. Savina descended the stairs cautiously with a gentle sashay of her hips, the shotgun aimed at Giroux’s face. He was moaning and bleeding. Cinq-Mars looked. The wounds were worse than he first thought.
‘Back away from the table,’ she ordered Cinq-Mars. ‘Slow, like I said, the way I like it.’
He obeyed. She bent to retrieve Giroux’s weapon from the staircase, putting it down behind her. In a nick, she added another shell to her shotgun.
‘Now we’re in one big motherfucking pile of shit, aren’t we?’ Savina said.
‘Your doing.’
Abruptly, she noticed the empty chair.
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘Looking for me?’
Quinn cocked the hammer of the guard’s pistol. Placed the barrel in Savina’s right ear. Savina jerked a quarter-way around. No more than that. Her weapon aimed now at Cinq-Mars.
Under her breath, she advised Quinn, ‘I’ll shoot him. Blow him apart. Shoot me, the shotgun fires and kills him.’
‘Really?’ Quinn had learned from Savina’s father. How to talk with utter calm yet be totally terrifying. She had also learned how to be convincing. ‘You shot the other guy twice. He’s still breathing. Anyhow, what do I care about a cop who took his own sweet time getting here?’ She feigned enjoying this. Her voice was relaxed, in complete control. She tried not to look at Giroux. The sight of him might cause her whole act to crumble. ‘Drop the shotgun, lady, or a bullet blasts through your ear and out the other side. Think about that mess for six seconds. That’s how much time you got.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Savina wanted to know. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, robbing my house? You get off on that? Fuck you!’
‘Quinn,’ Cinq-Mars said. The stalemate was a bad one. The woman with the shotgun was in a bind. She was stalling for time. Looking to make a move. ‘Don’t shoot her.’ He made eye contact with the young thief. She seemed to get what he was doing, just like that.
‘Why not?’ Quinn asked him, playing her part, the role of a girl with a gun and a streak of desperation. They both had to convince Savina that she’d pull the trigger even if unprovoked. ‘Maybe it was her. Maybe she killed Deets. Eh? Lady? You kill my boyfriend, huh?’ She shoved her a tad with the barrel of the gun.
‘I told you already. My husband did it. He’s fucking dead, so what’re you going to do about it?’
‘Let you join him.’
‘This cop goes down, too.’
‘Ask me how much I care.’
‘Quinn,’ Cinq-Mars said sharply. ‘Don’t do it. Savina, come on. You shot a policeman. That’s bad. But you said it yourself, your old man can get you out of that. He’s got judges in his pocket, prosecutors he walks over, folks he can intimidate. That won’t happen if you kill my partner. A cop-shooting, he gets you off. Worst case, big reduction in sentence. Killing a cop is different. Your old man can’t swing that. And Quinn, come on, don’t shoot her.’
‘Go ahead,’ Savina proposed. ‘I kill this cop. You kill me. No judges, no jail.’
‘Put the gun down, Savina. End this.’
‘Hey, little girl. Let’s see what you’re made of. Rice pudding, I bet.’
Quinn kept her pistol aimed at the woman’s head. No one dared look to determine whether her knees were quaking. She heard in Savina’s voice what she’d seen in her eyes. She had seen Quinn as dead meat and herself as dead, too. Now her voice betrayed that she expected, and perhaps desired, that exact outcome.
Cinq-Mars took a stride toward the two women.
‘Nobody fucking moves!’ Savina shouted. And then suddenly everybody did.
A shot fired. Quinn cried out, flinched away, as if a line drive had skimmed off her forehead. She’d been nicked by a bullet. Savina ducked and doubled over. Her shotgun went off in her hands. Cinq-Mars reacted, his body as slow as a tortoise, it seemed to him, yet his mind cottontail-quick as he surged toward Savina, seized her weapon, and sent her sprawling across the floor. Another shot fired. He went to shove Quinn aside, but she ducked ahead of his arm. As Cinq-Mars spun back to the pool table, he grabbed his pistol and aimed up the stairs, where the kitchen guard, sheer curtain still wrapped around one arm, was down on his belly, taking another shot at Quinn from the top of the stairs.
Cinq-Mars didn’t fire back. The patrolman whose name he couldn’t remember – Brandon or Brendan? Wyatt? – had disobeyed orders and come in the back way and pinioned the kitchen guard to the floor, yanking away his weapon in a quick struggle. Cinq-Mars was down in the basement but flying through the sky and zipping off a trapeze, and suddenly everything, almost, was under control.
‘What did you shove me for?’ Quinn griped. So she was all right, though her forehead was bleeding.
Savina Vaccaro Shapiro was no worse for wear. Except she could scarcely move from rage.
‘Brandon! Wyatt!’ Cinq-Mars called both names since he couldn’t figure out which came first. ‘Ambulance! Officer down!’
‘Already called, sir. I can hear the sirens.’
The man had reacted to the first shots fired.
Savina found her voice, expressing her despair with a string of expletives.
‘You’re done,’ Quinn told her. Taking the moment for herself. ‘Your daddy won’t save you now.’
A challenge that revived her foe. ‘This ain’t over. This ends when we blow your ass in two.’
Cinq-Mars demanded she turn around while remaining on her knees. He took rope previously used on Quinn to bind her wrists behind her back, and this time her ankles. He asked Quinn to watch her – a task she took to – and attended to his partner, who suddenly was quiet and still.
‘Hang on, Yves,’ he whispered. ‘Hang on.’ He silently prayed. Not every bullet was accounted for. He checked Giroux for more wounds.
The patron announced that Touton had to take a call himself. The captain stepped into the kitchen. Staff huddled close by. Touton said little. He returned to his guest, bringing wine and whisky bottles back with him. He poured. His demeanor grave.
‘Our negotiation just changed.’
‘How’s that?’
‘The baseball goes to Cooperstown. With it, a story. Of how Jackie Robinson signed it for a crime boss who was later slain. His killer stole the ball to make the murder look like a robbery. Running away, he killed a cop too. Find the baseball, identify the killer. Easy, except, the ball went m
issing. The killer kept it. He became a mob boss himself. Decades go by. The ball is stolen again. A son-in-law wants leverage over his father-in-law. I guess you two didn’t get along. Trouble for you, you didn’t know where it went. That must’ve worried you. Then the ball is stolen by a thief breaking into a house. The Hall of Fame will love the tale. They won’t mind that it comes with another story. One that is to remain sealed pending the passage of time. Unless a certain girl is impeded, let’s use that word, as she strolls down the sidewalk. In which case, a truer, more exciting, tale will be revealed, with names spelled out with a signed affidavit. One signature on the affidavit will be mine. How do you like our deal so far?’
‘Not that much,’ Ciampini said. ‘We been over this. What changed?’
‘I have the girl.’
Ciampini went stone silent. As if he had stopped breathing.
Then he said, ‘No, you don’t.’
‘Savina is safe. Under arrest. She shot a cop. Like father, like daughter. You must be proud. He may pull through, my cop, or not. Lucky if he does. For you, not only for him. If he dies, I can put both you and Savina away. I have the girl’s testimony. I’ve got a cop shot up with a shotgun. Trouble is, we both know how this works. A hit-and-run. A drive-by shooting. Tragedy strikes. Suddenly, the girl is no more. Instead, I propose, that if the cop lives Savina does a little time. Nothing she can’t handle, given her genes, not to mention your influence inside the pen. The ball goes to Cooperstown. You walk free. You leave the girl alone for the rest of your life and, as a favor to me, do nothing after your life to hurt her. As a favor to you, it all stops here. Savina gets a light sentence and she too strolls safely on the sidewalk. You walk, I stumble into my retirement. Pissed off you got away again, otherwise at peace.’
‘You don’t have the girl,’ Ciampini said. Not a statement of disbelief, one of chagrin, defeat. Of course Touton had the girl if he knew she was at Savina’s.
‘Call. Find out.’
Ciampini rose from the table. He brushed a few bruschetta crumbs from his tie. ‘Give me a sip of your warrior whisky.’
Touton stood, crossed to the bar, and returned with a snifter.