by John Farrow
In a fog, he shook the slender, soft hand. She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. “I thought I called out the cavalry,” he told her.
“I talked Agent Dreher out of it, sir. We agreed upon a limited presence. Me.”
He looked at her as if she spoke a foreign language.
“You,” he said—and he wanted to register a complaint, “are not the cavalry,” but instead he caught himself and spoke to the more surprising revelation—“talked him out of it?”
Seated for no more than six seconds She now popped back up, returned to the door, and shut it. Cinq-Mars noticed that before returning she scanned the washroom to make sure they were alone.
“Detective Cinq-Mars—”
“Do you mind calling me mister? I’m supposed to be retired.”
“Mr. Cinq-Mars. Are you all right? You don’t look well.”
“I’m stressed, Agent Sivak. I’m used to stress, but not like this. I’m unaccustomed to being helpless. It’s a new experience, so no, I’m not well. But nothing to be concerned about. Now, please tell me that you didn’t come alone.”
She sat again. A handsome woman, with little makeup. Despite the solidity of her facial features her look was not severe, and despite the businesslike aspect to her attire—a pants suit, sturdy shoes—she moved with a subtle grace. The long hair helped. She reminded him of his wife that way, although Sandra was prettier and more overtly and confidently feminine, even in her barn clothes.
“I’m here alone,” she told him. “It’s very possible, Detective—Mr. Cinq-Mars, that your wife was taken precisely to see who might show up. If it’s just me, her abductors may relax some. No one needs to know that our mutual friend sent me. This might play out in our favor down the line.”
“I keep asking Agent Dreher to tell me what I don’t know.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I do. I’m not going to tell you what you don’t know either. Imagine if you did know too much, and imagine if you had told your wife. I understand that you’ve been confiding in her.” She raised her eyebrows to gently chide him.
“What are you saying?”
“Things might be far worse for her right now.”
“Is it not possible, Agent Sivak, that things could not be any worse?”
“Let’s hope that that’s not true.” She leaned in closer to him. “Let’s proceed on that premise, okay?”
Although he really didn’t know what he was agreeing to, for this felt more weighted than a mere wish for his wife to be safe, Cinq-Mars agreed. “Okay.”
She leaned in still more closely and spoke more quietly, so that Cinq-Mars knew that she wanted something from him. “Have you gathered from our talk so far that I’m somewhat aware, somewhat au courant, of this file? For instance, that I know why you’re here in New Orleans?”
“I’ve gathered that, yes.”
“So can we proceed”—Cinq-Mars noted that this seemed to be a favorite phrase—“on the premise that this is true, but that such an opinion need not travel to anyone around us at any time?”
Cinq-Mars studied her eyes. She certainly carried an intensity there.
“You want to be presented to the world as ignorant?”
“Let’s just say,” she demurred and continued with her eyes on his, permitting no diversion, “that it’s in our best interests, and particularly your wife’s, that we don’t scare anybody.”
“So no cavalry.”
“Just me. And I’m ignorant of most things pertinent to you and your presence here, as far as anybody else who’s here needs to be concerned.”
Cinq-Mars held on a moment, but proceeded to nod. “Now I understand how,” he ceded.
She waited with a curious expression for him to explain himself.
“How you convinced Agent Dreher. You’re convincing.”
She still did not break her penetrating gaze. “Mr. Cinq-Mars, it’s not that I’m convincing. If I am it’s irrelevant. What counts here is that this is important.”
“All right,” he said. “I believe you.”
He didn’t know any of the people around him, everyone in a flurry and working in a blur, but for once he felt better. That growing ache on his brain seemed to diminish, and he had some confidence now that he might make it through the night. He realized that that had been weighing on him. Relief from the fret of being incapacitated right when he was needed most released his mind to think more astutely about the matter at hand, about saving Sandra.
“So,” Agent Vira Sivak inquired, “do you want to introduce me to the investigating officer?”
“Sure. He’s on this floor somewhere.”
He wasn’t hard to find. As it turned out, an introduction was not necessary. “Pascal,” she said, extending her hand to him, which told Cinq-Mars that although they had met, they weren’t bosom buddies. The notion was reinforced when Dupree referred to her as Agent Sivak. Not buddies at all. Although he shook her hand.
“Is this the cavalry?” Dupree asked.
“Mr. Cinq-Mars may have been overly optimistic as far as that goes, but I assure you, Sergeant, the FBI takes a kidnapping very seriously.”
“Alleged kidnapping,” Dupree corrected her.
Cinq-Mars intuited what Dupree wanted to say, but wouldn’t in his company. He explained, “He’s holding out for her to be a runaway wife. Or that I bumped her off myself. In this case, I’m hoping he’s right, at least as far as that first part goes. You two know each other?”
“We’ve had the pleasure,” Sivak said.
“Danziger Bridge,” Dupree revealed as he looked at the agent.
“Pascal wanted to keep an investigation of the New Orleans Police Department internal,” Sivak elaborated. “Obviously, as the external agent assigned to the case, I thought otherwise. We had our fractious moments. But we found a way to get the job done. Of course, we don’t only go back to Danziger Bridge,” she reminded him.
Dupree released one of his bright grins and drew his thumb and forefinger down outside his mouth repeatedly. Irritated, he tried to shake it off.
“Agent Sivak,” he explained, “is the one who pointed out to us that the investigation into the murder of Gifford and Dorsey Lanos was underway at the same time as the killer was snoozing in the attic. Of course, she not only pointed that out to us, she also let it be known to the Times-Picayune, thereby making me in particular, and the New Orleans Police Department in general, the laughingstock of the entire State of Louisiana. But, hey, water under the bridge. Or, if you like, water under Danziger Bridge.”
Émile Cinq-Mars was rocked by curiosity. Separate events from the past that addled Detective Pascal Dupree were now loosely knitted together by the presence of FBI Agent Vira Sivak, who in turn was attending to the abduction of his wife. For the first time since discovering Sandra missing, he felt clearheaded, his thoughts as crisp as a bell, as if his faculties were finally being summoned to figure this one out.
He was on his own, he knew, down here, but for the first time he didn’t regret that and grasped that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He felt it coming on. He was back on his game.
He wanted to become more active, but first, he had something to do.
FIFTEEN
Cinq-Mars asked Everardo Flores to take him up to the roof.
He was still pouting. “I think they checked the roof. I’ll find out for you.”
“I’m not checking the roof. I’m going to the roof. There’s a difference. I presume I need a key. I’m asking you because I’m pretty damn sure you can help me out with that.” He wanted to add, “Stop pouting,” but chose to let that pass.
The man remained sullen as they headed skyward.
“Mr. Flores,” Cinq-Mars said. “There’s something you need to understand.”
“I’m a suspect. I understand. You don’t trust me. Fine.”
“Do you trust me? If you do, you’re a foolish man, because you don’t know me. Not at all.”
&n
bsp; “Fine. But you are not a suspect.”
“Of course I am. Sergeant Dupree considers me a suspect. Men do bad things to their wives, Mr. Flores. You know that. Why should I, a stranger, be the exception to a known rule? In Dupree’s mind, I’m a suspect, and I’ll tell you something else, in my mind, so is he.”
“You are patronizing me,” Flores said, but he was protecting himself. He was taking the comments seriously.
“Why would I, Mr. Flores? Do I care about your feelings? Dupree took me away from my wife and out of the hotel. In my absence my wife went missing. I’d be an idiot not to think of him as potentially involved. Do I believe it? That doesn’t matter. Investigations become corrupted when people lean too much on what they believe. But he knows and I know that neither of us is in the clear. So. Naturally. Neither are you. Do I believe that you killed a man tonight and abducted my wife? Again, it doesn’t matter what I believe. But am I experienced enough to know that anything is possible? As it happens, I am. What was your background, Mr. Flores, prior to hotel security?”
“Military police.”
“That’s impressive,” Cinq-Mars told him, and he was obviously sincere, making Flores feel better. “Which branch?”
“Air force.”
“More impressive yet, in my mind. Good on you, Everardo.”
The elevator jerked to a stop and they were let off on the uppermost floor. Flores had used a key on a particular elevator—the general public had no access to this level. Yet they still had to go higher and took to the stairs. Up a short flight, Flores unlocked a door to the hotel’s roof, which was flat and functional in the usual industrial manner, with a tar and stone surface and no amenities whatsoever for guests. Flores glanced around. “See? Nobody’s here.”
“Are you Catholic, Mr. Flores?”
The man shrugged. “I’m of Mexican extraction. What do you think?”
“Practicing?”
“I go to mass sometimes. My wife goes regular. I’m not saying I’m pious.”
“Some would say I am,” Cinq-Mars mused.
“Practicing, you mean?”
“Pious.”
“You? A cop?”
“It’s not against the law, Mr. Flores. A little unusual, I agree. Of course, if the pope was asked for an opinion, and let’s hope that he never will be, he’d probably call me out as a heretic. If I’m one I’m also the other. A pious heretic, let’s say.”
“Okay,” Flores said. He was not comfortable with the conversation.
“Okay. This is why I’m here. I want you to notify me if someone from your staff calls you with anything important. In the meantime, I’m going to take some quiet time on my own. Because you’re Catholic I can say this to you—I’m also going to pray awhile, after my quiet time. My wife, Mr. Flores, has been kidnapped. That’s what I believe. Her life is in danger and that’s if I put a positive spin on things. So I’ll take a few moments to pray and to remind myself that there is more to this than we think. Then I’m going to do a good hard study of everything, try to discover if I’ve missed something, if there’s anything I can do. So, quiet time, then prayer, then a good hard think. I want you to know what I’m doing because I don’t want you to interrupt me unless you consider it exceedingly important.”
Solemnly, Everardo Flores nodded. “I will also pray,” he said. “For you, and for your wife.”
“Thank you,” Cinq-Mars told him, then moved off to the far side of the rooftop to commence his quiet time.
In a way, this was his preparation for prayer. And yet, before he endeavored to communicate with the cosmos through prayer, he wanted to commune with Sandra. As he moved across the roof his eyes flooded with tears. Soon he could scarcely see. Raw emotion shook him. He had to slow down near the edge of the roof as he couldn’t trust his blurry eyesight; the lights of the city were magnified and distorted by tears. His heartache was singular and vanquished the pale, pitying sorrow he’d experienced in recent times after Sandra had suggested that she might leave him. He gasped for breath, and as he went to his knees—safer, given the height, but also necessary given the tumult now breaking through him—he loosened himself and gave himself over to a blooming anguish.
Cinq-Mars wept, first with a burst and then quietly, his torso shaking so that he finally had to hug himself to hold in the ache, the sheer galvanizing pain washing through him like an unremitting turbulence. He spoke Sandra’s name several times, but could not be certain if the word was uttered aloud or not. For the nonce he had become her name and little more, that was all that he knew or could experience.
He fought against the many imaginative interpretations of what she might be going through. He had to stick with the simple fact that he didn’t know.
Although Everardo Flores had been forbidden to interrupt, the visitor’s misery compelled him to go over to Cinq-Mars and place a comforting hand upon his shoulder. He had seen people in torment before, and perhaps he felt that he could determine when enough was too much, when a cessation to the suffering was warranted.
Saying nothing, Cinq-Mars thanked him with a nod, touched his hand to the hand upon his shoulder, and bolstered his inner resolve. Emerging from the pain, from his own wreckage, now was the time to move on to his prayer.
Flores gave him some distance again.
Cinq-Mars rose from his knees. Any deity, just or otherwise, would recognize that he had sufficiently humbled himself. He stood, as if to be transfigured, although inwardly he was wholly prostrate. To receive a new identity and energy, the very act of standing upright was meant to be an accomplishment of his prayer, as yet unspoken, and to be its ultimate prescription as well. He had to work through all this and survive his agony standing, so he started out that way, upright yet broken, presenting himself to the cosmos to have himself, and this juncture with the world, transformed.
He prayed.
Like detective work, he believed, prayer required the proper approach. Both activities had to be ingenious. Each engaged the unknown, demanded the whole of one’s experience and intelligence, vitality and intuition. Ultimately, the detective or the supplicant had to go it alone, no matter how many colleagues were brought in to investigate a crime or how many penitents submitted upon their knees. Humility was key to both endeavors, patience a virtue, honesty a prerequisite that would inevitably become an ongoing adventure of self-discovery. Cinq-Mars was never convinced that one could be done without the other, for even in prayer one needed to investigate, stay attuned, struggle to unravel the secrets and deepest mysteries in order for the act to be increasingly more true to oneself, and therefore more viable. Conversely, in balancing his way through a difficult inquiry into a complex crime, he inevitably needed to stretch himself out and summon the intricacies of the cosmos to have a look, to suggest possibilities, probabilities, improbabilities, chaos and string theories galore to get his mind around fresh core discoveries. Just as the conditions that predated the beginning of time had engaged thinkers and cosmologists for centuries, and theories continue to unfold, any inquiry into a crime shared that mindset: What was life like the instant before all hell broke loose? And before that, what exactly? What particles free-floating in a cosmic stew had collided, and what was borne of that devastating blow: What matters formed? How was it possible for one event, the big bang, say, or a murder, to be triggered out of and within the previous morass? But to get there, to engage, whether it be cosmological speculation or the scrutiny of a crime, required a measured, serious approach, a discriminating evaluation, and a critical judgment of one’s own talents, abilities, and even a catalog of one’s own shortcomings. For Cinq-Mars, the study of the cosmos as an independent pursuit of knowledge or as a yearning for the godhead, or the study of a crime in order to extrapolate truth from lies and thereby render justice—both these practices—constituted forms of prayer.
The heretic in him: the edict in scripture to pray unceasingly he interpreted to mean that all thought, and all activity, became prayers when the proper attitude for t
he circumstance was both discovered and sustained. Prayer could mean going to your knees in a cathedral, abject and penitent, but equally it could mean reveling in a concert, or a hockey game, making love or frying your brains figuring out your taxes with a dollop of integrity. Being prostrate, or upon one’s knees, undoubtedly had it’s time and place, such as on a mountaintop or a rooftop in New Orleans, and yet that form of public humility or degredation might also be misplaced and sorely ill-timed. He was not here to denounce his height, but to extend the rooftop further, albeit microscopically, toward the heavens, simply by stretching himself higher, arms raised. Let there be humility in this, in stretching to stars so distant they existed only in another time that had passed by and ceased realms ago, so that that fleeting light on a voyage through the universe was merely being intercepted along its distant vast path, and the very futility of reaching out to the vanished skies exercised then a blatant humility akin to the more familiar crouch in an attitude of prayer. The approach: He stretched himself to his fullest, albeit merely incrementally, fully extended, and beseeched the whole of the universe and any other universes out there to spare his wife should that be possible, should that be a token that the apparent oneness of life in its cosmic and subatomic and its known and unknown aspect might favor, and he was praying yet without words for the God in all particles and some particle of God to deem this doable, plausible, to find it within the bounds of renewal and invigoration and change, denote it as a cosmic duty, in a way, and return to an undeserving but nonetheless rewarded servant his august due, for which he vowed eternal gratitude.
If his supplication could not be granted, he would understand that also.
He had words, as well:
God. Please. Help her. Please help Sandra. Help me help her. Use me. Help her through me if that’s possible. Guide me.
Please help.
He did not necessarily believe in God in the way that others did, although his faith was strong and he believed that there was a place in the world for signs and wonders that pertained to the cosmos and that the cosmos was a part of God. His understanding maintained that nothing could exist or be outside of the All, the One, yet despite his faith he did not believe in a God who used a cellular phone or even that God was capable of using any telephone whatsoever, not even a landline. His God had limits. Had predetermined His limits. Nonetheless, he was hearing a phone, and out of his semi-trance Émile understood that his was ringing and that the darn thing was only going to get louder and louder unless he attended to it now.